WE DESIGN AND DO IT BECAUSE WE LOVE IT
Professional, Pro-Am and amateur collaboration in the design process: daydream or nightmare?
Laurens Hebly | 9828249 28.11.2007 Creative Development University of Utrecht Professional School of the Arts Thesis advisor | Ingrid Mulder
TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION SECTION I / THE PRO-AM REVOLUTION OF DESIGN CULTURE 1. THE PRO-AM / BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR
1.1 What is a Professional and what is an Amateur?
1.2 What is a Professional Amateur?
2. EVOLUTION OF PRO-AM ACTIVITY
2.2 Counterculture ideals: the reversionary and technophiliac tendency
2.3 Democratic principle / participation and debate
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2.1 Counterculture ethics: Do-It-Yourself
2.4 Technological advances and the Internet culture
2.5 Techno-elites, hackers, virtual communitarians and entrepreneurs: collaboration, peer review and innovation.
2.6 Commodification and commercialization of Internet culture 3. MAKING DESIGN MORE ‘USEFUL, LASTING AND DEMOCRATIC’ 3.1 Massive Change: design is everywhere
3.2 The Pro-Am movement: engaged and designing
SECTION II / LEARNING FROM THE PRO-AM WORK ETHICS /
Participation and collaboration in the design process
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4. ‘Open organizations’ and the Pro-Am work ethic 4.1 Wiki Wiki
4.2 The working ethics of Pro-Am’s: The eight rules of open organization 4.3 ‘Open organizations’ and the Pro-Am designer
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5. COLLABORATION IN DESIGN PROCESSES
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5.1 Defining collaborative design
5.2 Meta-design: Designing the design
5.3 SER Process Model: A process model for collaborative design 5.4 Application of meta-design in art and design processes
6. EXAMPLE OF META-DESIGN METHODS IN TWO GRAPHIC DESIGN
PROJECTS: ‘DE DIENST’ AND ‘DO’
6.1 ‘de Dienst’: Are democracy and art compatible?
6.2 ‘do’: the ever-changing brand that depends on what you do
6.3 Collaborative design: a significant approach for graphic design?
SECTION III / ENVISAGING AN OPEN, COLLABORATIVE DESIGN INITIATIVE
7. ENVISAGING A OPENLY ORGANIZED AND COLLABORATIVE GRAPHIC DESIGN INITIATIVE
7.1 The concept of ‘do Studio’ / an open studio for visual arts & communication
7.3 Where would ‘do Studio’ be situated and who would be involved?
7.2 What will ‘do Studio’ be doing?
7.4 How would the studio be organized?
8. DISCUSSING THE CONCEPT OF ‘DO STUDIO’ CONCLUSION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS REFERENCES
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We design and do it because we love it | abstract
ABSTRACT There is a growing need and desire in graphic design to make design more “useful,
lasting and democratic”. By involving more people in the design process professional
designers in various fields of design are exploring ways to heed the call for a more open,
constructive and collaborative approach to design. Professional, amateur and professional amateur (Pro-Am) collaboration in design processes has been an influential force in
the development of design culture over the past few decades, particularly in the field of
computational media, for example in ‘open source’ software development. Pro-Am’s find themselves in between the realm of professional and amateur, possessing the skills of
professionals and the devotion of amateurs, without making a living from their efforts. One of the main points of this investigation is to show how Pro-Am and amateur
involvement in design processes has revolutionized the collaborative creative process. Standpoint: Stimulating and directing professional and professional amateur collaboration in design processes will foster “more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication”.
Investigating Pro-Am work ethics give a clear idea how the Pro-Am design projects
are organized ‘openly’, giving participants open access to tools and information and an open structure to be creative and collaborate with each other. Academic approaches to
collaborative design, such as participatory design1 and meta-design2 give a more in-depth view how professional designers and developers can stimulate and direct collaboration
with Pro-Am and amateur participants. The focus of this investigation is to examine how professional designers can learn from Pro-Am work ethics and employ the meta-design
methods for collaboration the design process. Will this collaboration contribute to ‘more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication’?
‘do Studio’ is a concept for a collaborative design project that builds on an existing
design initiative, originally developed by communications agency KesselsKramer3 , to
illustrate the open organization of the Pro-Am and the collaborative design methods
of meta-design. The aim of the ‘do Studio’ concept is to envisage the creation of a largescale collaborative design project, to demonstrate how professional and skilled Pro-Am designers can direct such a creative design process.
Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. / Participatory Design: Principles and Practices / Hillsdale, NJ. / 1993 Fischer, G., & Scharff, E / Meta-Design—Design for Designers / New York / 2000 / pp. 396-405. 3 www.kesselskramer.com 1 2
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We design and do it because we love it | introduction
INTRODUCTION Greater access to tools, information and communication has made it easier for amateur designers to learn the ‘tricks of the trade’ and work alongside professionals. Amateurs
are becoming more professional, keeping the enthusiasm of amateurs without earning a
living with their efforts. According to Charles Leadbeater4 innovation advisor of former prime minister Tony Blair, this century will signal the rise of professional amateur (ProAm) design initiatives. In his writings on the Pro-Am revolution Leadbeater states that
people underestimate how much design and innovation comes from Pro-Am enthusiasm. Pro-Am’s design because they love to do it, rekindling the idea of human ingenuity, the
‘Do-It-Yourself ’ philosophy that ‘you yourself ’ can take charge in creative and sustainable development and design.
The compelling view that Leadbeater proposes is that the rise of the Pro-Am movement is becoming an influential force in design culture. Similarly, some design critics argue that Pro-Am’s are challenging the position of professional designers, making them
question their own role as designers. A number of designers and artists are already dealing
with this question in constructive ways, exploring new art and design frontiers; thus where professional and amateur, developer and user, producer and consumer interact, participate and collaborate. One of the points of this research is to investigate these changes that are taking place in the design culture, by studying art and design projects that consciously invite their ‘audience’ to become active participants in the creative process.
Involving ‘the audience’ to become a part of the creative process is a development that has been attracting much attention in various fields of creative practice such as architectural
design, theatre, music, software development, game design, advertising and graphic design. Some critical discourse concerning the field of graphic design indicates that there has
been a major movement in design, turning against the growing global commercial culture. An interesting aspect of the discussions among design theorists and critics concentrates on the role graphic design is playing in this development. Many graphic designers and
designers from other fields are opening their eyes and seeing that “Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is
changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact”5 This excerpt
from a recent graphic design manifesto called First Things First 2000 describes one of the 4 5
www.charlesleadbeater.net First Things First Manifesto 2000 / in: Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design / p. 5+6
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We design and do it because we love it | introduction
major potholes of contemporary graphic design: the commercial priority of design. Signed by some of the most renowned graphic designers the manifesto stands as a monument for a revived movement in graphic design culture.
The First Things First 2000 manifesto gives a glimpse of where graphic design could be heading. “We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting, and democratic forms of communication - a mind shift away from product marketing and toward the
exploration and production of new kind of meaning.” An important aspect of this passage for this investigation is that it signals the changes that are taking place in design, not only in graphic design, namely that design is becoming a more democratic process.
The main standpoint that will be discussed in this paper rests on the basis of a ‘reversal of
priorities’ in design; that stimulating and directing professional, professional-amateur and amateur collaboration in design will foster “more useful, lasting and democratic forms of
communication”. In order to defend this standpoint this investigation will concentrate on a number of specific research questions:
1. What defines a Pro-Am? How are Pro-Am’s influencing commercial and socio-cultural productions, and design in particular?
2. How do Pro-Am’s organize the design process? Are there other design methods that could help professional designers to organize the collaborative design process?
3. How could a design project be organized to stimulate and direct professional, Pro-Am and amateur collaboration?
4. Will professional and Pro-Am collaboration contribute to ‘more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication’?
The research questions will be discussed in three consecutive sections and will hopefully give a comprehensive and insightful look at the compelling debate that is going on in design discourse about the effect the Pro-Am movement is having on design culture.
In Section I the focus will be on defining the Pro-Am movement and the influence it is having on design. Another important point that will be dealt with in this section is that the Pro-Am’s have created a new sense of community and have developed new ways to organize themselves and their work process; making the design process more inclusive and collaborative. The aim of this section is to describe the context in which the Pro-
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We design and do it because we love it | introduction
Am movement is developing and to investigate some Pro-Am design activities, giving an impression of the far-reaching effects of the movement, influencing many different aspects of our society. A number of professional and Pro-Am design initiatives will be
examined to give an idea how their collaborative and ‘open’ approach are effecting cultural production.
Section II will deal mainly with the innovative ways Pro-Am’s organize the creative
process and look into (established) methods and working ethics that are being employed in Pro-Am projects to share creative development in the design process. There are also various approaches being discussed in academic research that deal with collaborative
design methods, which go a step further by proposing ways for professionals designers to
stimulate and direct collaboration with Pro-Am’s and amateurs in creative processes. Two
graphic design projects will be described to illustrate the collaborative design methods and the possible ways of applying these methods in design practices.
The aim of section III is to translate the Pro-Am way of working and the collaborative
design models into a concept for a collaborative design project. How would a professional or skilled Pro-Am designer go about organizing the design process to include Pro-Am’s
and amateurs in the development of a project? Building on a project originally proposed by communication agency KesselsKramer ‘do Studio’ is a concept envisaging an ‘open’
design project that creates an environment for collaborative design; a virtual or real-life
space where professional, Pro-Am and amateur designers can collaborate freely in design related projects.
After describing the ‘concept’ of ‘do Studio’, this investigation will evaluate the possible outcome of more collaborative creativity on the participants and the likely benefits and challenges this collaborative approach could have.
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
SECTION I / THE PRO-AM REVOLUTION OF DESIGN CULTURE In March 2007 the Items, a bi-monthly magazine for art and design, published an article
about the Pro-Am movement in design culture, featuring an inspiring discussion between Dingeman Kuilman and Charles Leadbeater. Dingeman Kuilman, is director of Platform
21 in Amsterdam, an organization that is “interested in creative developments in fashion and design, including amateur initiatives”6 in design processes. Currently Charles Leadbeater
is writing, maybe even by this time publishing, a book concerning the Pro-Am movement called ‘We think: why mass creativity is the next best thing’. Together Kuilman and
Leadbeater are the two intellectual forerunners and advocates of the Pro-am movement. One of the main points that they discussed in the article was the changing role of
professional designers and the growing involvement of users in creative and productive
processes. This development in design signals an important step for the evolution of the ‘passive consumer’ into the ‘active producer’. “The more that easy to use tools are distributed to a community of knowledgeable users, the easier it is for them to start creating their own
content”7. The professional designers are starting to feel that their role in the design process is changing. Kuilman and Leadbeater believe that professional designers will start to
facilitate involvement of users by concentrating on directing creativity and organizing the design process to be more inclusive and collaborative.8
The following sections will attempt to shed some light on the concept of the professional amateur (Pro-Am), looking closely at the development of Pro-Am activity over the
past decades and the major influence the movement has had on cultural production and innovation.
1. THE PRO-AM / BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR
1.1 What is a Professional and what is an Amateur?
To start with, it is useful to briefly look at the definitions of the terms ‘professional’ and
‘amateur’. As defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary9 , a profession is a “vocation or occupation requiring advanced education and training, and involving intellectual skill”. The term ‘professional’ is one that has most often been defined as a person who practices a
specified “profession for money, as a means of livelihood, rather than as a hobby.” An amateur is http://www.platform21.com/about/ Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net 8 Marc Vlemmings / De beste stuurlui stappen aan boord / In: Items 2 / 2007 9 Webster’s New World Dictionary / Third College Edition / Simon & Schuster / 1988 6 7
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
defined as a person who engages in meaningful activity “for the pleasure of it rather than for money, and/or does so without professional skill.”
Kuilman argues that in the 20th century there was a clear distinction between a person’s profession and their socio-cultural position and the activities they were engaged in
besides their profession, which most often were considered to be amateur. The industrial revolution brought about the age of professionalism, in which people were educated to become part of a specified profession and systemized production process, which were
organized into increasingly economically beneficial procedures. As this period defined the professional it also defined those activities that weren’t necessarily professional,
thereby creating a divide, and often a value distinction, between professional activities and amateur activities.
1.2 What is a Professional Amateur?
Nowadays it seems that this division between professional and amateur has become
blurred. Most people still depend on their professional occupations to sustain a desired standard of living, but there is a growing population of people who are challenging the
professional work ethics, by working for pleasure rather than for monetary motives and at a professional level.
There seems to be an increasing need nowadays to develop interests apart from working as a professional in a certain field. Many people are becoming less interested in working for
their companies and getting more involved in developing their personal and socio-cultural interests. “ Your economic life revolves around exploitation. In your socio-cultural life it revolves around exploration.”10
The definitions mentioned before already indicate two main characteristics of a Pro-Am, namely, that they have and employ professional skill and that they engage in meaningful
activity for the pleasure of it rather than for money. These essential features of a Pro-Am are not a novelty, but the interesting point is that they haven’t been widely recognized as an influential force until recently. The Pro-Am’s are individuals and collectives that
find themselves between the realm of the professional and the amateur, challenging the position of professionals and professional organizations.
As you can imagine this is a relatively difficult group of people to study. Pro-Am’s 10
Marc Vlemmings / De beste stuurlui stappen aan boord / In: Items 2 / 2007
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
are a hybrid group, and can be found in nearly every field and profession imaginable.
Some Pro-Am’s are organized in large communities and others are smaller specialized
workgroups, some collaborate with professional, others with amateurs. One characteristic
seems to be universal: “Pro-Ams do not tend to be loners. They build collaborative organizations – clubs, mutuals and now networks – because it is very difficult to be a Pro-Am on your own. To
be a Pro-Am requires the systematic acquisition of skills. That involves learning from coaches and peers, which in turn requires social organization so that skills can be passed on and accredited, through clubs, networks, events, competitions and performances.”11
Typically, Pro-Am’s spend most of their ‘leisure’ time working on projects that require considerable knowledge and skill, and they do this for the thrill of a challenge, the
fulfillment of self-expression, or the recognition from their peers. Their incentives to work and develop are fueled by a different set of work ethics, ethics inspired by for example,
active participation, freedom of expression, common (intellectual) property available to all, cooperation, social interaction, companionship, debate, constant innovation, and welfare
for all. Some of these work ethics are unfortunately not very common in professional lives. It is precisely these characteristics that make the Pro-Am’s such an important group to consider more closely.
2. EVOLUTION OF PRO-AM ACTIVITY How and where did the Pro-Am movement start? What were the main influences that lead to the rise of the Pro-Am? Much of the development of the Pro-Am movement can be studied by looking at the last four decades, for example, with the rise of the
counterculture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Do-It-Yourself work ethic, the advent of
the computer and computer mediated communication. So where to begin? Many books
could be (and have been) written on the socio-cultural climate that fostered the Pro-Am’s. Therefore it would be best to limit the contextual study to some of the main socio-cultural and technological developments.
2.1 Counterculture ethics: Do-It-Yourself
“A ‘Do-It-Yourself Society’ is often associated with these goals: creating your own artifacts instead of buying of-the-shelf products.”12 The 1950’s and 1960’s were periods that
witnessed a cultural revolution that undoubtedly influenced the development of the
Pro-Am movement over the previous decades, most notably in Western society. Growing 11 12
Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net Gerard Fischer / Beyond “Couch Potatoes”: From Consumers to designers and active contributors / 2002
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
discontent for the industrialized, mass-producing and mass consuming society was fueling the counterculture sentiment at the time. Development in communication
technology made it possible for sharing information for community initiatives and
actions. “Countercultures and political groups established their own newspapers, known as
the underground or alternative press. The media in these contexts were also coined ‘community media’, and this term referred to a diverse range of mediated forms of communication.”13
A significant aspect of the counterculture was the belief that Western society had become too dependent on the consumer culture and that people should encourage each other to
‘Do-It-Themselves’. Enthusiasts began circulating the idea that people could create things
with their own hands, without the help of paid professionals, and work together to sustain themselves and their community. An intriguing example of counterculture ethics is the magazine known as the ‘Whole Earth Catalog’. The very first issue, published in 1968,
began with this manifesto: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has
succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to
conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his
adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.”14
The magazine, headed by Stewart Brand,
had a very clear goal: to give people greater access to tools and useful information, so that they themselves could share creative
ideas and self-sufficient technologies. The
Do-It-Yourself ethics of the counterculture are very closely related to the Pro-Am
movement that we are witnessing nowadays. It isn’t strange that many of the people
involved in producing the Whole Earth
Catalog were also involved in developing
one of the earliest online communities, The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL), 1
which was brought together by early
Nicholas W. Jankowski / Creating community with media: history, theories and scientific Investigation / 2002 / p.36 Introduction of The Whole Earth Catalog 1968 / Lee Worden / The Rise and Fall of the Whole Earth Catalogue / 2004 Figure 1 / Cover of the first issue of the Whole Earth Catalog 1969 / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
computer-mediated communication networks. The early Pro-Am movement, inspired by counterculture ethics was crucial in the development of the Internet. Investigating this
development may also give some more insight into the development of Pro-Am activities. 2.2 Counterculture ideals: the reversionary and technophiliac tendency
How have counterculture ideals influenced development of computer-mediated
communication? The link between the counterculture of the 1950’s and 1960’s and the
rise of the Internet is one that demonstrates the significance of the early Pro-Am ethics. To investigate this link it is interesting to concentrate on some of these ideals that came from the counterculture and how they have shaped the development of early computer-
mediated communication and online interactive communities. One interesting description by Theodore Roszak discerns two traditions in utopian thinking of the counterculture: the reversionary tendency and the technophiliac tendency. The reversionary tendency propagated a return to wholesome and nature orientated ways of living, whereas the
technophiliac tendency promoted development and new technology.15 These two modes
of thought were brought together in the Whole Earth Catalog, but as time passed the technophiliac tendency set the wheels in motion for the technological and cultural revolution, which we are witnessing today.
The beginning and development of the Internet exemplifies the technophiliac tendency and it is clear to see that it has prevailed over the past few decades. The existence of
computer-linked communities was predicted by J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor,
research directors for the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), who set in motion the research that resulted in the creation of the first such
community, the ARPANET: “What will on-line interactive communities be like?” Licklider and Taylor wrote in 1968: “In most fields they will consist of geographically separated
members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest...”16 The ‘communities of
common interests’ are characteristic of Pro-Am communities, people coming together to participate in conversations, collaborating in projects and sharing information and skills with one another.
2.3 Democratic principle / participation and debate
Democratization of cultural production: As a concept, ‘communities of common interest’ also demonstrate the significance of participation and debate in ‘public’ affairs, two 15 16
Theodore Roszak, From Satori to SiliconValley / 2000 Howard Rheingold / The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier / 2000
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We design and do it because we love it | section I
crucial democratic principles. The growing discontent with mass media during the late 1950’s and during the 1960’s inspired many people in western society to question the
direction of democracy in cultural production, and media in particular. The increasing
commercialization and politicizing of media at the time, and more generally speaking
cultural production, reinforced the traditional consumer/producer roles. Initiatives like the Whole Earth Catalog stand as early examples of movements that countered the
influence of large organizations to steer the consumer away from ‘mindlessly consuming’, by making cultural production more open to for people to participate in. The possibilities were becoming more and more apparent to enthusiasts and activists that they could
take ‘cultural production matters’ into their own hands. This period signaled a change
in mindset of Western society, and sentiments began to emerge that were in many ways related to democratic ideologies of citizenship and participation. Developing media
production, and participation in the media production processes became a way for a larger audience to engage in ‘public connection’ through ‘public cultural production’. More people were becoming discontent with consuming and being at the ‘receiving
end’ of cultural production and as a result sought ways to participate in more personally meaningful cultural production.
In his paper, ‘The productive ‘consumer’ and the dispersed citizen,’ Nick Couldry questions what individual media consumers do “as active subjects . . . as producers of culture . . . the
point of view of the active producing cultural worker who fashions narratives, stories, objects,
and practices from myriad bits of prior cultural production”.17 Couldry observed new hybrid forms of production and consumption in new media, in which consumers take initiative
“through participation, new spaces of public connection, new spaces of mutuality”18 , and thereby
become more engaged citizens. This is an important notion that links past initiatives like the Whole Earth Catalog and new initiatives of ‘open publishing’, which has become
widespread with the advent of online publishing. New media has given even more people the possibility to become ‘productive consumers’ by interacting in production processes and becoming producers of culture. It is interesting to consider how the technological
development of new media, and the growing idea of public connection, influence the way many people think about their position as producer/consumer in society. 2.4 Technological advances and the Internet culture
How did technological advances help the start of the Pro-Am movement? In the past few
decades advances in information and communication technologies have revolutionized 17 18
Nick Couldry / The productive consumer and the dispersed citizen / 2004 Nick Couldry / The productive consumer and the dispersed citizen / 2004
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our industrialized society and helped us create a network society. The development of the
Internet has made it easier for people to communicate with each other, share information and build new ways to organize themselves.
“Technological systems are socially produced. Social production is culturally informed. Internet
is no exception. The culture of the producers of the Internet shaped the medium. These producers were, at the same time its early users.” 19 Manuel Castells also expresses the ideas of
producers and consumers, specifically in the development of the Internet. Castells does distinguish between producers/users who directly influence the technological advance of the Internet and consumer/users whose use of the new media isn’t directed at its development but does influence the evolution of the system.
The Internet was designed as a technology of free communication, as a means to
share information, stimulate technological innovation and create an environment for
community. The producers/users of the Internet are the creators of the culture of the Internet, the “set of values and beliefs informing behavior”20 . According to Castells the
Internet culture is made up of four layers: the techno-meritocratic culture, the hacker
culture, the virtual communitarian culture and the entrepreneurial culture. In these four layers it is possible to see a link to the distinction made earlier between professionals
and Pro-Am’s. In the following paragraphs the relevance of these four layers of Internet culture to the study of Pro-Am activity should become clearer.
2.5 Techno-elites, hackers, virtual communitarians and entrepreneurs: collaboration, peer review and innovation.
“The link between these cultural expressions and the technological development of the Internet is the openness of free modification of Internet software, and particularly of the source code of
software. Open distribution of the source codes allows anyone to modify the code and to develop new programs and applications, in an upward spiral of technological innovation, based on cooperation and the free-circulation of technical knowledge.”21
The collaborative development of Internet culture: The ‘openness’ that Castells speaks of
in his book, ‘The Internet Galaxy’ refers to the techno-elitist culture that is characteristic of academic studies. Technological and scientific progress are two governing principles
that drive academic study, and sharing the (acquired) knowledge and skills amongst the Manuel Castells / The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business and Society / 2001 / p.36 Manuel Castells / The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business and Society / 2001 / p.36 21 Manuel Castells / The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business and Society / 2001 / p.38 19 20
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academic community is seen as a way to advance the academic community as a whole.
Another important aspect of academic study is that of discussion and peer-review, which also lies at the heart of Internet culture. It is important for participants to be able to
discuss each other’s work and learn from criticism, and by giving criticism themselves. While the conception of the Internet was the work of techno-elitist, academic and
professional developers, the ongoing evolution of the Internet has been influenced greatly by hacker interaction and collaboration, a culture that has strived to be autonomous from academic and commercial institutions, but employs similar working methods. There are characteristics of techno-elitist involvement in Internet culture that run
through the hacker culture and this is evident when looking at one of the major hacker occupations: open source software development. Techno-elitists and hackers share the
aim to constantly develop technology and improve their skills and knowledge. The social, self-organizing and non-commercial properties of open-source software projects are
aspects that make hackers stand apart from academic and entrepreneurial technologists.
These are aspects that relate hacker culture to the virtual communitarians. While hackers
were mainly concerned with developing the technological foundation of the Internet, the communitarians were responsible for developing social forms of behavior, and the means to do so, developing such communication methods as instant messaging, chat rooms, mailing lists.
Probably the most influential and determining factor in the spreading of the Internet to more the general public, is the entrepreneurial and commercial use of the network
infrastructure, developed by the techno-elitist, hackers and communitarians. Internet
transformed business and business in-turn transformed the Internet. The basis of this entrepreneurial culture is being able to earn money with technological innovation,
new products and services, by using the Internet as a marketplace, a virtual space for
advertising and moneymaking. The new economy of the Internet embodies the opposing ethic to that of the techno-elitist, hacker and communitarian: it is about making money and doing so by capitalizing new technology and ideas.
“The culture of the Internet is a culture made up of a technocratic belief in the progress of humans through technology, enacted by communities of hackers thriving on free and open technological creativity, embedded in virtual networks aimed at reinventing society and materialized by money driven entrepreneurs into the workings of the new economy.�22 22
Manuel Castells / The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business and Society / 2001 / p.61
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2.6 Commodification and commercialization of Internet culture
In his book ‘The Virtual Community’, Howard Rheingold questions the commercial direction the Internet has taken and how this can affect other layers of the Internet
culture. More and more media content is becoming commercial. It is being used for
advertising and being turned into commodities. The consumer society promotes the belief
that “the way to be is to buy”23 and it shifts peoples attention away from public engagement.
The increasing commodification of computer-mediated communication is also making it increasingly difficult for people to gain access to virtual spaces and participate in online activities. The main objective of commercial discourse is to keep people interested and wanting more, and this is jeopardizing rational and critical exchange of ideas.
Revival of the counterculture ethics in (graphic) design: These commercial developments in Internet culture, have lead a number of academics and professionals in related fields
to look critically at the commercial uses of the Internet. One field that is closely related
to the developments in Internet activity, and to a large extent also the commercialization of Internet, is graphic design. As mentioned in the introduction of this paper a group of
graphic designers proposed and signed a manifesto a couple of years ago, the ‘First Things First Manifesto 2000’, stating among other things that “Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do.”24 These graphic designers echo a similar call from 1964 from graphic
designer Ken Garland and 21 other designers, who published the ‘First Things First Manifesto 1964’.
“We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought
up in a world in which techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been
bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have
flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as cat food, stomach powders, detergents,
hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip on’s”25
A New Wave: Similar to the sentiment of the emerging counterculture of the 1960’s
there seems to be a growing uneasiness among both cultural producers and consumers
nowadays. The growing influence of commercial production and consumerism, stimulated for a great deal through the commercial Internet culture, seems to stand uncontested. Howard Rheingold / In: The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier / 2000 First Things First Manifesto 2000 / in: Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design / 2000 / p. 5+6 25 Ken Garland / First Things First Manifesto / 1964 / http://www.kengarland.co.uk/ 23 24
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2
Among those concerned are many designers from various fields of design, that have
heard the message of the First Things First manifestos of 1964 and 2000, and have also
witnessed the constant commercialization of design. There is a growing need in design for a shift in priorities, from commercial to more socio-cultural and environmental causes.
In this investigation it is becoming apparent that Pro-Am designers are taking charge in making this shift happen.
3. MAKING DESIGN MORE ‘USEFUL, LASTING AND DEMOCRATIC’ 3.1 Massive Change: design is everywhere
There are massive changes sweeping through our ‘global’ society. Many of these changes Figure 2 / Adbusters campaign / “Buy Nothing Day is an altruist campaign created by Adbusters, a magazine concerned about the erosion of physical and cultural environments by commercial forces, and is promoting to switch off from shopping and tune back into life.” www.benettontalk.com/2006/11/ For more images and information visit the Adbusters website: http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/
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have been brought about by the abilities and shortcomings of design, in the broadest
sense: from the design of computer-mediated communication to the design of inner-city infrastructure, from the design of airplanes to the design of newspapers. In his book,
Massive Change, Bruce Mao and the Institute Without Boundaries give a compelling
view of the importance of design in our society. Once we become conscious that design is
everywhere, in all that is man-made, then we begin to see how we use design, interact and even contribute to it.
To come back to the example of the Whole Earth Catalog, another interesting aspect
of this alternative, counterculture magazine is the way it was produced. In the beginning (1968) mainly enthusiasts who had little design experience produced the magazine.
The designer’s inexperience gave the catalogue its DIY character, with slightly amateur
typesetting and layout.26 It was a non-profit magazine and therefore it had to be produced
at low cost, meaning that the participants would be collaborating for reasons other than monetary. The tools for making the magazine where not difficult to use, and people collaborated on both the design and content to create a cohesive whole.
The Whole Earth Catalog demonstrates the changing, ‘more useful, lasting and
democratic’ role graphic design can play in cultural production. It clarifies the point that graphic design should not be seen as an autonomous process but as a multidisciplinary process, combining disciplines such as journalism, philosophy, anthropology, creative writing, environmental studies and many more. Graphic designers should be able to think critically and use their skills to communicate through visual means, and
organize collaboration in the design process. From a more practical point of view, the
catalogue’s DIY features of low-cost, open publishing, slightly amateur graphic design and collaborative creativity that relate to the Pro-Am ethics that Charles Leadbeater
speaks of is his paper, ‘We Think’. Graphic design has become increasingly accessible for more people who wish to practice it, thanks to greater access to design tools/software, skills and knowledge. Pro-Am graphic designers are also starting to take the stage,
showing initiative to break through the overemphasized commercial uses of graphic
design. Starting open-source typography development projects, designing and planning
alternative small exhibitions and workshops. The more you look for these Pro-Am graphic design projects, the more you find. As a whole the Pro-Am movement is proving to be a force to be reckoned with, in graphic design, and most notably in other fields of design. It’s becoming the counterculture of the 21st century. 26
Virginia Postrel, Do it yourself, in: Business Week, April 2007 / http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/
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The emerging participation culture is the context that is defining the development of the design culture, similar to the Internet culture. As mentioned before it is becoming easier
for people to participate in design and share their work and ideas with other people. The network society, which Manuel Castells speaks of, makes much of this possible, and as he points out the participatory and collaborative way of thinking in Internet culture is transcending into other levels and fields of society. Design culture is being influenced
greatly by participatory and collaborative culture of the Internet, and it is the Pro-Am movement that seems to be its driving force.
3.2 The Pro-Am movement: engaged and designing
How have the Pro-Ams revolutionized the various fields of design? “Pro-Am’s are more
than a new exotic social species of do-it-yourself enthusiasts. They bring wider benefits to society:
they help build communities, drive innovation, sustain democracy, empower poorer communities and contribute to culture. Henry Ford’s model of organisation was built on the new character of the factory worker. Wikipedia, Linux and their like are substantially built by and for the ProAm.”27 3
An interesting example of a Pro-Am online community is the website of ‘MAKE
Magazine’28 . The official Make magazine
can be seen as a contemporary version of the Whole Earth Catalog, and is also available
as a printed version. The website is a central meeting point for many professional and
Pro-Am ‘makers’, with a community forum
and a blog that gives an overview of dozens of design related projects, varying from photography to software development,
arts & crafts to music. Pro-Am enthusiasts are able to publish photos, videos, and
stories about their work and viewers are
able to respond and review the work. The
contributors/users have organized themselves, with the help of the chief editors, (web)
designers and programmers, and created a virtual community and a virtual space in which they can participate and collaborate on design related projects.
Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net www.makezine.com Figure 3 / Cover of Make 11 / http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/08/tiny_cars.html
27 28
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“Pro-Am’s thrive in communities, where they learn to play with, compete against and perform to others. The volunteer organizations that sustain Pro-Am’s also help to generate social
capital, lasting relationships and friendships that help to provide the social glue and basis for
cooperation.”29 The Pro-Am community, as can be seen on a website like makezine.com, is
very diverse. They show a tremendous amount of creative work and the ability to organize themselves.
In some fields of design the success of Pro-Am projects and initiatives challenge
professional design work. This is becoming more and more evident in fields such as open
source software development, a multidisciplinary field that integrates for example graphic design, programming, and interaction design. Competing in the software industry is
tough business, especially when facing mega organization like Microsoft and Adobe.
Open source projects such as the operating system of Linux30 and collective open source
software projects like sorceforge.net31 demonstrate that it is possible to develop software that is free for autonomous users.
In graphic design, for example, there is also a growing trend of Pro-Am activity and
involvement, however it isn’t a highly acknowledged trend and examples are not very
common. One of the questions that inspired this research is what kind of designers, and
design projects, employ similar collaborative design methods in the creative process. It is interesting to investigate what defines collaborative design and how models, such as the
‘open source’ model, can apply to other fields of design. In the following sections the aim is to concentrate on collaborative design projects and methods developed to stimulate professional, Pro-Am and amateur collaboration in the creative process.
Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net http://www.linux.com/ 31 http://sourceforge.net/ 29 30
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SECTION II / LEARNING FROM THE PRO-AM WORK ETHICS /
Participation and collaboration in the design process One of the underlying motives of this investigation is to determine the role of
professional designers in the evolving design culture. In the Items article discussed previously Leadbeater and Kuilman propagated that Pro-Am’s are challenging the
position of the professional designers by showing they are able to organize themselves
effectively and create work at a professional level. The greater access to digital design tools such as Photoshop, Flash (animation software), and the wide availability of tutorials to
learn practical design skills, has given design enthusiasts an unprecedented opportunity to
practice in this field. Computer- mediated communication has also made it easier for ProAm designers to communicate with each other and participate in the design process.
However, looking at for example graphic design there are many aspects of design work that require more than practical design skills. “The graphic designer traditionally behaved as the representative of the audience. Only a trained and competent graphic designer could
make the client’s vision accessible to the prospective audience by re-communicating our common cultural signs and symbols in new visual contexts.”32 Professional graphic designers are
experienced in communicating ideas to an audience and persuading a desired response, and have the intrinsic knowledge of visual language to be able to do so. Many design
critics believe that this socio-cultural insight and ability to use visual language to create
meaningful design is what gives professional graphic designers the ability to distinguish themselves. Professional designers in general also should have experience in managing
the different stages of a design process and the ability to collaborate with other designers to share the creative process. These are important characteristics of being a professional
and skilled designer, and they are also aspects that can help designers approach the design process from a ‘meta’ level. In this context the term ‘meta’ means “going beyond or higher,
transcending: used to form terms designating an area of study whose purpose is to examine the nature, assumptions, structure, etc. of a (specified) field [metalinguistics, metacriticism]” 33.
After investigating the concept of Pro-Am’s and the context in which they have developed as an influential movement in design culture the focus will turn to their methods of
working and organizing the design process. By looking at the Pro-Am ‘open’ approach to the design process, many links can be made to similar collaborative design methods
described in other academic studies. An important aspect to discuss in this section is what 32 33
Giovanni Aneceshi / ‘Visibility in Progress’ / 1996 / p. 8-9 Webster’s New World Dictionary / Third College Edition / Simon & Schuster / 1988
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distinguishes the Pro-Am approach and whether the Pro-Am approach can enhance
the collaborative design process. Another important question is how the professional designers can direct this collaboration between professional, Pro-Am and amateur
designers in the design process, and how the professional designer can approach this
from a ‘meta’ perspective. What are important elements that could be adopted for the organization of a collaborative design project?
4. ‘Open organizations’ and the Pro-Am work ethic To illustrate the work ethic of Pro-Am’s it is useful to look at a project in which their
open organization and ‘open source’ approach is most recognizable. Wikipedia, the free
online encyclopedia, is a website that relies on the contribution of voluntary users (a mix of professionals, Pro-Am’s and amateurs) to create, publish, review and edit texts for its immense collaborative online ‘well’ of information. 4.1 Wiki Wiki
According to Wikipedia.org, Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki in 199434 ,
called WikiWikiWeb. A wiki is usually a web-based medium built up of a network of
linked information that can be edited by anyone who has access to it. Wiki’s develop as
more people contribute articles and edit the texts that are posted, and all this information can be linked to create a network of information. Wikipedia35 started on January 15
2001, and in the first four years it attracted millions of contributions, in many different
languages. There are no barriers to entry; everyone who is interested can contribute to the collective ongoing creative process. This is one of the factors that determined the success
of Wikipedia, but this democratic approach is also a point that has been criticized heavily for being untrustworthy.
There are many people, both amateur and professional, who contribute to Wikipedia.
Amateur involvement and the self-governing characteristic of Wikipedia often give critics the idea that there is no quality control and that the website is prone to be misused, for
self-promotion or obstruction of information, to name but a few abuses. These criticisms
are fundamental questions in the debate about the trustworthiness of online participation. However, the open approach to Wikipedia is not as open as it seems at first. There is a very intricate system of self-organization that underlies the professional and amateur collaboration. 34 35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki www.wikipedia.org
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One of the fundamental tools of Wikipedia is the system of peer-review, a method widely used in academic and scientific study. It allows participants to judge the quality of each
other’s work and gives them the possibility to edit and make changes wherever necessary. When someone contributes a text they also join the Wikipedia community and thereby also are asked to comply with the websites codes of conduct. These norms and values
keep the community of contributors and reviewers working towards the common goal: to
provide widely accessible, accurate information. The committed and longtime contributors serve as critical reviewers and enforce these codes of conduct and thereby acquire higher
status in the community. Contribution, peer review and recognition for this participation are integral aspects that keep up the self-governing structure of Wikipedia. 4.2 The working ethics of Pro-Am’s: The eight rules of open organization
What are the methods that make this approach successful? It is interesting to note that Charles Leadbeater has taken a similar open approach to writing his new book, We
Think. By publishing early versions of his writing on his website36, he invited viewers
to give their ideas and comments on his writings, thereby becoming participants in his
creative thinking and writing process. In his book he also discusses the ‘eight rules of open organization’, which Pro-Am’s employ in their creative endeavors: 1. A kernel to get things going...
Working on a collaborative project is made easier if there is some work to begin with, or
to continue working on. A kernel could be the beginning of a beautiful plant if nurtured and given the right conditions to grow. In design projects a ‘kernel’ could be the early
stages of a software program, the first pages of a wiki, the first lines of an interactive story; basically the beginning of any kind of collaborative project one can imagine. 2. Motivate and attract contributors...
When someone, or a group, develops this initial ‘kernel’ there have to be people motivated
to participate and further develop the project. Therefore it is important to inspire potential
contributors with the initial project idea, and create a good ‘environment’ to work, whether it is real or virtual. An important aspect of working together is creating community,
through shared values, norms and goals. Participants also want to be recognized and often contribute to an ‘openly’ organized (design) project to express their ideas and show their skills, thereby acquiring a status in the project and community.
36
Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net
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3. Crowds need meeting places…
A working community needs a real and/or virtual space to meet and share ideas,
information, and tools, also to see the progress of the project. The collaborative work
results in collective design, which is open for people to use and adapt as a (re)source, and is governed by shared/common ownership. 4. Self-distribution of labour…
One of the integral elements of ‘open’ collaboration is that the participants who contribute do so on their own free will. Instead of earning money with the work they carry out,
the participants are driven by other motives, such as recognition from the community.
There are also many different types of contributors, depending also on the type of project. Some participants are involved in usability testing; others review the software and pick
out mistakes; others rewriting the code; some design the interface or plan the interaction design. All constructive contribution helps in the evolution of the project and its
collaborative organization. The characteristic of open organizations is that the distribution of labor is determined by participants and based on their interests, skills and motivation, and not by project managers or a board of directors. 5. Encourage people to build on your ideas...
Open organization is about constantly developing the project through collaboration; by writing, designing, programming, reviewing, discussing, and having others constantly build on the foundation of work done by other participants. This is the basis for an
innovative work method: constantly creating, testing, evaluating and redeveloping. In
collaborations this can only be accomplished through dialogue, similar to methods of peer review in academic research. 6. Think Lego...
To bring all these participants together, and to make their contributions fit together, ‘open’ organizations must have a structure in place that makes the project a cohesive whole.
A method that has been used often in open organizations is splitting the collaborative project into modules, which can develop separately and can be brought together to
function as one. A ‘design team’ is needed to organize the structure of the modules on a
‘meta’ level, so that other contributors can concentrate on the more specific tasks in their module.
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7. Conversational leaders...
As opposed to the concept of the corporate leader, many open organizations are guided by leaders who do not exert executive power over decision-making. Often these leaders are the creators of the open organization/project and have built the basis of the project and
working community; the ‘kernel’ and the norms/values that help the organization of the
project and the way people interact with one another. The creators of an open organization allow for the participants to build on their foundation, and use the self-governing structure to resolve issues and move forward. 8. The New Model…
The characteristics of open organization are not new; in the past people have benefited from common ownership in agriculture, used peer-review methods in academic study, employed democratic methods in governing. The revolutionary aspect of the open
organization is the way these ingredients have been brought together in the collaborative ‘open source’ approach to the creative process.
4.3 ‘Open organizations’ and the Pro-Am designer
What is the importance of design in open organizations, and vice versa? Charles
Leadbeater has signaled the beginning of the new era of ‘open organization’, and he is not alone in his quest to investigate the influence this development is having on our
constantly innovating and evolving society. Leadbeater concentrates on examples of such
open and collaborative, Pro-Am driven organizations but doesn’t seem to specify the role design plays in these organization and the creative process. If we look again at the views of Bruce Mao and the Institute without Boundaries, about the importance of design
in our daily lives, then it also becomes evident that design plays a pivotal role in ‘open organizations’, and vice versa.
“Not since the age of invention have so many new products, processes and services become
available to the public. What we see over the last hundred and fifty years, and in a dramatically accelerated pace over the last fifty, is that design is changing its place in the order of things.
Design is evolving from its position of relative insignificance within business (and the larger
envelop of nature), to become the biggest project of all. Even life itself has fallen (or is falling) to the power and possibility of design. Empowered as such, we have a responsibility to address the new set of questions that go along with that power.”37
37
Bruce Mao & Jennifer Leonard / Massive Change / 2004
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Design is in essence a very broad term, a diverse field and an interdependent discipline. This view is becoming increasingly common in design discourse and practice. Design research and practice has contributed to the developments in ‘open source’ styles of working, but in return it can also learn and evolve from the developments in open
organization methods. Now that creativity and the creative process have become more open to a larger public, including amateurs, and that collaboration between amateurs
and professionals is becoming commonplace, design has to find ways to bring together initiatives and direct the process to a common and constructive goal. 5. COLLABORATION IN DESIGN PROCESSES More often these days, skilled, professional designers will be taking on additional roles in the design culture and will be guiding those enthusiastic, though less skilled, participants through the design process. This will require the skilled designers to approach the design process from a ‘meta’ level, to be able to structure and organize the design process. New media are empowering consumers/users/viewers to play a more active role in design
production, and skilled/professional designers are starting to develop new ways to direct collaboration in design, by providing information and tools necessary for designing;
encouraging and leading the participants to learn and create meaningful contributions to
the design process. This raises the question how creative collaboration in design processes can be organized more constructively.
The following chapter will give some insight to a number of academic approaches to collaborative design, showing a striking similarity to the rules of ‘open organization’
proposed by Charles Leadbeater. Giving a more in-depth view of collaborative design will offer some alternative views concerning possible roles of the professional and the Pro-Am in design processes, and more specifically how the collaborative methods may be applied to (graphic) design processes.
5.1 Defining collaborative design
An academic approach to collaborative design: At the ‘Center for Lifelong Learning and Design’ Professor Gerard Fischer is leading research for investigating interdisciplinary methods of collaboration in creative processes. Fischer’s research concentrates on the exploration of “new computational media based on fundamental aspects of how we think,
create, work, learn and collaborate”.38 An important aspect of the research is to see how 38
Gerard Fischer / Beyond “Couch Potatoes”: From Consumers to designers and active contributors / 2002
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new technologies not only help in making established cognitive tasks easier but also how they can be used to deal with new tasks in alternative ways. Fischer expresses
that “computational media offer the possibilities and the potential to allow people to express themselves and create personally meaningful environments”.39 Social and technical
infrastructures can be developed to stimulate new forms of collaboration between
people in their creative endeavors, allowing them to act as designers and become the owners of design problems.
What defines a designer if everyone can be one? Why would people want to be designers? How could people become designers? In his paper, Beyond Couch Potatoes, Fischer
presents the designer very broadly as “a person who wants to act as an active participant and
contributor in personally meaningful activities”. One of the fundamental standpoints Fischer defends in his research is that most people want to be and act as designers. People no
longer want to be mere users, consumers or spectators, they want to participate in debate, contribute to design and express themselves. This standpoint underlines the growing trend that design processes are becoming much more inclusive and that innovative
computational media have given people greater access to tools. In his paper Fischer
defines these ‘design’ tools as ‘convivial tools’, which “allow users to invest the world with their meaning, to enrich the environment with the fruits of their vision and to use them for
the accomplishment of a purpose they have chosen.”40 More than other media technologies,
computational media have given people greater access to convivial tools, thereby making creative processes more open to a wider public.
What is understood by the term design? What are the main approaches relating to
collaborative design? “Design is better defined today as an inquiry and experimentation in the activity of “making”. That is, design is conceived as a humanistic enterprise in which the subject
matter is not fixed [Buchanan & Margolin, 1995], and is meant to envision possibilities (“how things might be”) and elaborate them in order to enable people to experience the world in more and richer ways [Maturana, 1997].”41
This definition indicates that design is an active and evolving process, requiring time
to develop. According to Fischer in all design processes there are two basic stages that
can be distinguished: ‘design time’ and ‘use time’. During ‘design time’ developers create the context; for example the design environment, tools, systems of communication. At
‘use time’ users are shown the design and use the design, which has been created during Gerard Fischer / Beyond “Couch Potatoes”: From Consumers to designers and active contributors / 2002 Ivan Illich / Tools for Conviviality / 1973 / http://clevercycles.com/tools_for_conviviality/ 41 Elisa Giaccardi and Gerard Fischer / Creativity and Evolution / 2005 / p.2 39 40
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‘design time’. Often this ‘use time’ design does not fit the needs of the user and then need
to be modified. The ‘design time’ and ‘use time’ perspective indicates two main approaches
to deal with this issue: User-centered design and participatory design. In both approaches the essential condition is that the design is ‘underdesigned’ in order to leave room for improvement and user involvement.
User-centered design42 involves users in the design time stage of the design process,
however, the developers concentrate on issues of usability and do not give the users
opportunity to play an active role in creative development. In participatory design43 the
users are more directly involved in the creative process and stimulated by the developers
to be co-designers, making the design more responsive to the users needs. Meta-design44
is a more collaborative design approach, which creates more open context for the users to take on the role of a designer and contribute their own ideas and creativity in the design process. It is this collaborative approach that distinguishes meta-design from the other interactive design approaches, and makes it interesting for the investigation of design
methods that could benefit professional and Pro-Am collaboration in design projects. 5.2 Meta-design: Designing the design
How has the concept of meta-design developed? What are the most important
characteristics of meta-design? Working together with Gerard Fischer, Elisa Giaccardi
has given an overview of conceptions about meta-design in her paper, ‘Meta-design as an Emergent Design Culture’. “Historically, since the 1960s, the term meta-design has been used
to focus on the possibilities of ‘designing the design’.”45 This earlier conception of meta-design
exemplifies the idea of a ‘meta’ approach, taking an overhead view of the design process and investigating / structuring / designing it. In the mid eighties, at the time when
computer-mediated communication was becoming more advanced Gene Youngblood
wrote, in ‘Meta-design: Toward a Postmodernism of Reconstruction’, “meta-design deals
with the creation of context rather than content; it is a mode of integrating systems and setting
actions in order to create environments in which people may cultivate ‘creative conversations’ and take control of the context of their cultural and aesthetic production.”46
Giaccardi explains that meta-design has been constantly developing as a theoretical
concept and also as a practical methodology. “The development of the notion of meta-design can be categorized as critical and reflexive thinking about the boundaries and scope of design,
aimed at coping with the complexity of natural human interaction made tangible by technology. Norman, D. A., & Draper, S. W. / User-Centered System Design / 1986 Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. / Participatory Design: Principles and Practices / 1993 44 Fischer, G., & Scharff, E / Meta-Design—Design for Designers / 2000 / pp. 396-405. 45 Elisa Giaccardi / Metadesign as an Emergent Design Culture / 2005 / p.343 46 Gene Youngblood / Meta-design: Toward a Postmodernism of Reconstruction / 42 43
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Meta-design seeks to transform this complexity into an opportunity for new forms of creativity and sociability.”47
5.3 SER Process Model: A process model for collaborative design
A distinctive aspect of meta-design research has been the seeding, evolutionary growth,
and re-seeding (SER) process model. This particular model visualizes the methodology for “encouraging designers to conceptualize their activity as meta-design, thereby supporting users
as designers in their own right, rather than restricting them to being passive consumers.”48 The model is constructed to evolve a ‘seed’ design over time, in a collaborative environment, during which there is planned activity initiated by the developers and continued
together with participants, followed by an evaluation and review of the developing ‘seed’ design. Drawing conclusions from evaluation and reviews help developers organize and restructure the ‘seed’ design and ‘re-seed’ it by returning the collaborative design to the
collective information space for the participants to develop further. Figure (4) visualizes
the evolutionary and collaborative process of the SER process model and the interaction
between the developers and the participants. The important thing to remember is that the participants can have different backgrounds, not necessarily being professional designers themselves. In this way Pro-Am and amateur designers are stimulated to participate in
the design process and are directed during the development of the design process with the help of developers.
U
D
U
U
evolved information space
reseeded information space
U
SE
U
RE
U
ED I
NG
seeded information space
SE ED IN G
26
EVOLUTIONARY GROWTH
D
U
time key D developers U users
Elisa Giaccardi / Metadesign as an Emergent Design Culture / 2005 / p.343 Gerard Fischer / Meta-design: Beyond User-Centered and Participatory design / 2003 / p. 2 Figure 4 / Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding (SER) Process Model (Fischer & Ostwald, 2000)
47 48
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5.4 Application of meta-design in art and design processes
“The connections between meta-design, telematic culture and interactive art are significant and based on a similar call for the expansion of human creativity. Some overlaps, in particular, are
interesting and can be pointed out as further indications of how meta-design actually expresses
the emergence of a new culture, somehow at the convergence of art and design.”49 In interactive art and design projects meta-design methods, such as the SER process model, can help
create a working context, which stimulates ‘users’ to create content. Instead of giving the user the object of art or design, meta-design methods provide tools with which the user can create and act as designers.
An example of a meta-design environment and user created design/content: Second Life is an online 3D virtual world, developed by Linden Research, which allows participants
to create virtual personalities (avatars) and interact with other people in the virtual setting through their avatars. The ‘residents’ of this virtual world can also create items using
modeling tools and trade their work for virtual money, called the ‘Linden Dollar’. The
developers of Second Life have created a context in which participants can create content and express themselves, sometimes in ways that wouldn’t be possible in the ‘real’ world.
Second Life exemplifies the concept of meta-design. The developers have approached the
design of Second Life from a ‘meta’ level, and instead of creating content and scenarios they have created the framework and tools for participants to create there own creative content. 5
Elisa Giaccardi / Metadesign as an Emergent Design Culture / 2005 / p.347 Figure 5 / Creating my avatar in Second Life / 49
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6. EXAMPLE OF META-DESIGN METHODS IN TWO GRAPHIC DESIGN PROJECTS: ‘DE DIENST’ AND ‘DO’
Graphic design projects that have stimulated and directed collaboration in the design
process: To elaborate on the example of a meta-design environment previously mentioned there are two other design projects that apply meta-design methods. These projects
demonstrate approaches to collaborative design that will be important to consider more closely to support the following section of this investigation, namely for ‘envisaging an open, collaborative design initiative.’
6.1 ‘de Dienst’: Are democracy and art compatible? “The Dutch government had 160 thousand euros to spend on an artwork for their government building ‘het Logement’. That is exactly one-euro cent per Dutchman. With my project each Dutchman will have the opportunity to say something with their small contribution.”50
In June 2002 Martijn Engelbregt was invited by the Dutch government to conceive and create an artwork for the newly renovated government building ‘het Logement van de
Tweede Kamer’. Engelbregt established ‘de Dienst’ (translated: the Service), an art/design/ research project that would investigate the relationship between democracy and art. ‘de Dienst’ thereby developed a collaborative framework to allow for a democratic creative
process, which aimed to yield a democratic artwork. In April 2004 ‘de Dienst’ began to invite people through web pages, emails and questionnaires to comment and vote on
proposed artworks using an online voting system. People were also invited to propose
work of their own and were given the opportunity to discuss their ideas and vote on all
the artworks using the website ‘www.de-dienst.nl’. After 9 months of intense interaction
between ‘de Dienst’ and ‘the participants’ 551 artworks were collected and voted on during 6 election rounds. Nine artworks were eventually selected and in March 2006 they were presented in ‘Het Logement’.
The question whether art and democracy are compatible with each other was an
underlying question that preoccupied ‘de Dienst’ for over three years. Engelbregt’s motivation for researching the possibility, or impossibility, of combining art and
democracy derived from his interest to involve people in his artwork. In many of
Engelbregt’s art/design projects the viewers become participants in the artwork, sometime 50
Robert van Gijssel / Interview with Martijn Engelbregt: ‘Het gaat me om de zoektocht’ / Volkskrant / 04.06.2004
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even in the creative process itself. ‘de Dienst’ is a unique example of an interactive art and design project that demonstrates how the creative process could be made more democratic, allowing more open debate, voting and participation.
“I know that democracy and art lie miles apart but my project ‘de Dienst’ for the Dutch
government building is more than a question whether most votes count. For me it’s about searching for the ideal work, and how it comes about.”51
How did the ideal work come about? By stimulating more active participation Engelbregt democratized the creative process and made collaboration possible. Many Dutch citizens from all ‘walks of life’ proposed artworks and gave their votes and comments on each
other’s work. It didn’t matter if the participants were artists or psychologists, professionals or amateurs; everyone had the opportunity to propose their own artwork or concept.
One of the most important aspects of the project was that people would interact and contribute, thereby developing the project together.
This particular project exemplifies how an art and design project has been organized to include professional, Pro-Am and amateur participation. Instead of creating an
autonomous artwork Engelbregt wanted to give every Dutch citizen the possibility to
contribute and become part of the creative process. Engelbregt developed the working
context for the project: the project goals, the rules of participation and a means for people to contribute. To give people an idea what they could contribute Engelbregt proposed a couple of artworks himself; a ‘kernel’ to kick off the project, similar to a ‘seed’ in the
SER process model discussed previously. With the project structure and some initial art propositions in place Engelbregt started a campaign to rally participants.
By placing advertisements in the newspaper, organizing expositions, giving lectures/
seminars, and sending press releases Engelbregt was able to attract quite some attention to his project. The website forum ‘dedienst.nl’ served as the virtual space where people
could propose their own artwork, post reactions to other people’s work and vote for the propositions they admired the most. The website was continuously evolving during the
one year period, after which there were final rounds of voting, which culminated in the
selection of 9 artworks to be placed in the government building. Engelbregt’s book ‘Dit
is Nederland’ gives a very detailed overview of the process of ‘de Dienst’, including all the 552 proposed artworks and a selection of the online discussions that took place. 51
Robert van Gijssel / Interview with Martijn Engelbregt: ‘Het gaat me om de zoektocht’ / Volkskrant / 04.06.2004
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6
Figure 6 / From left to right - top to bottom / ‘de Dienstbode’: newspaper produced by Martijn Engelbregt about ‘de Dienst / ‘de Dienst’: Engelbregt’s office in the government building ‘Het Logement van de Tweede Kamer’ / ‘de Dienstcatalogus’: catalog containing the process of ‘de Dienst’ and all the artworks proposed / Picture of Martijn Engelbregt / ‘de Dienstcatalogus’: a spread from the catalog showing a number of proposed artworks, descriptions and comments.
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Was the project successful in fostering collaboration? By creating a working context for
other designers, artists and enthusiasts to contribute Engelbregt has shown how an artist/ designer can approach the design process from a ‘meta’ level. There were no barriers to participate in the project, every Dutch citizen was able to contribute to the discussion about artworks, and propose their own work. Joke Hermes, a prominent academic
writer on the subject of popular culture studies, discusses the political effectiveness of
Engelbregts work in an article52 for a Dutch art magazine ‘OPEN’. In her article she gives
a number of criticisms concerning Engelbregt’s way of working and specifically about
‘de Dienst’. Hermes critically questions how democratic the process of ‘de Dienst’ was
and whether his art project as a whole actually helped the public to form opinions and stimulate the democratic process.
What kind of collaboration did ‘de Dienst’ stimulate? Eventually ‘de Dienst’ received 552 artwork proposals, 18.986 reactions to the proposed artworks and 74,638 votes.53 Max Bruinsma, design critic and writer for the Dutch design magazine ‘ITEMS’, also gave
some views about Engelbregt and ‘de Dienst. In his opinion, Engelbregt has given the
Dutch public a way to confront the government and engage in public matters. Bruinsma regards ‘de Dienst’ as an art project that provokes the participants to contribute, who
in turn provoke the public with their views. Evidence of this can be seen when looking
through ‘de Dienstcatalogus’. The artworks that were proposed by the participants and the opinions given in the forum discussions capture how people think about art, and public issues.54
The collaboration in ‘de Dienst’ was not on a ‘design’ level; participating artists were
not collaborating to develop a gigantic painting or sculpture, for example. The project developed by multidisciplinary collaboration, evolving by contributions from many
different participants, with diverse backgrounds. Much of the collaboration consisted
of discussion, by reviewing and criticizing ideas and proposals on the web forum of ‘de
Dienst’. As a whole, the project seems to be much more than an artwork made by Martijn Engelbregt. Much like an open organization like Wikipedia, ‘de Dienst’ is the result
of a ‘seed’, an initial concept and organization conceived by Engelbregt, that has been
shaped by the many participants, which has evolved through their collaboration, constant evaluation and new contributions.
Joke Hermes / ‘Gevangen in Ongemak’ / OPEN 10 / 2006 Martijn Engelbregt / Dit Is Nederland / Valiz / 2006 54 Max Bruinsma / In discussie met de openbare mening / OPEN 11 / 2006 52 53
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6.2 ‘do’: the ever-changing brand that depends on what you do “A new type of brand was developed and experimented with at communications agency
KesselsKramer. It continues on its mission to inspire and challenge people today. It’s a brand that remains incomplete. It requires the active involvement of people. Without participation, this
brand is nothing. It requires people to take action and actually do something. This brand will
never do it all for the consumer. It seeks to treat people with respect and demand the use of their brains and creativity.”55
The ‘do’ brand philosophy was established first; therefore the brand could be associated
to many different kinds of products. At the heart of the brand philosophy is the idea that active-participation is required from the consumer, by using the ‘do’ brand to be creative and make something new and (personally) meaningful. The common ownership and
use of the ‘do’ logo represents the idea that people can make things personal and share
their experience, ideas and work. The initial brand designs, like the ‘house style’, are also
meant to communicate the philosophy of ‘do’ and start a dialogue with people and inspire them to participate and contribute.
“The do mentality is the punk rock do-it-yourself attitude, a rejection of passive consumption
in favor of playfulness and interactivity”.56 An interesting example that demonstrates this
‘do’ mentality is the seminar focusing on the meaning of English words, given at the art & design academy St. Lucas in Boxtel, the Netherlands. After explaining the ‘do’ brand
philosophy each student was given an empty-paged book with the ‘do’ logo stamped on it, together with an English word; ‘do large’, ‘do sweater’, ‘do fuzzy’, ‘do lounge’, ‘do expert’. The students were given two days to come up with creative ways to give meaning to the
English words, using the book. The students showed very diverse and innovative ways of
approaching words and exploring the meaning these words can have. In this way ‘do’ also showed its involved and collaborative approach to teaching, by giving students a way to
contribute to a collective process, and express their own creative ideas. At the end of the seminar the ‘do’ books were exhibited as a collective project at Art Book in Amsterdam. How does this ‘interactive brand’ demonstrate the possibilities of the meta-design approach? “Each and any time ‘do’ holds a gathering, the audience is always invited to
participate in a way that makes their brains sweat.”57 The ‘do’ approach relates closely to
the collaborative methods proposed by meta-design researchers. The developers of the KesselsKramer / One hundred and one things to do / BIS publishers / 2006 Naomi Klein / The Financial Times / May 29 / 2001 57 KesselsKramer / One hundred and one things to do / BIS publishers / 2006 55 56
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7
Figure 7 / From left to right - top to bottom / ‘do Book’: Collaborative design project with students from Art & Design school in Boxtel, 1997 / ‘do Connect’ & ‘do Search’: examples of student interpretations and creative visualizations of English words using ‘do Books’ / ‘do Book’ exhibition: presentation of the project at Art Book in Amsterdam.
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’do’ initiative have created a collaborative context in which people can be creative and
express themselves. The developers have set up the creative ‘infrastructure’ of the project, the brand philosophy, the commonly applicable ‘house style’ that can be used freely by
participants to develop new ‘do’ products, services and other initiatives. In this way the contributors are constantly using the brand and evolving it over time and ultimately it
is the ‘do’ brand that brings it all together. In these ways the ‘do’ approach resembles the
method of seeding, evolutionary growth and re-seeding, typical of meta-design. To further study the ‘do’ concept KesselsKramer have made a compelling overview of ‘do’ design
initiatives in their book, ‘One hundred and one things to do.’ Viewing the collaborative
design projects in this book as a collective work also demonstrates the idea that the project is on-going and evolving over time, which is one of the main features of the ‘seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding’ meta-design approach.
6.3 Collaborative design: a significant approach for graphic design?
What is the significance of ‘de Dienst’ and ‘do’ as an example of collaborative (graphic) design? These two collaborative graphic design projects demonstrate how graphic
designers can use collaborative methods to make the design process more inclusive
and user created; as is being studied by meta-design research labs, such as Lab[au]58 in Brussels and ‘Center for Lifelong Learning and Design’59 in Denver. The SER process
model is a model that can be adopted by developers to approach a creative/design process
from a ‘meta’ level, in order to develop a context in which the user becomes involved in the creative process and can create (personally) meaningful content.
For meta-design research the study of these two graphic design projects could be
interesting, especially with respect to the research being conducted by Elisa Giaccardi, regarding the connections between meta-design and the newly emerging interactive
art and design culture. The meta-design approach to design process is still a very recent
development in design, and ‘de Dienst and ‘do’ serve as significant examples of this metadesign approach. Investigating meta-design in relation to these graphic design projects
illustrates the point of view that collaborative design methods and concepts can be applied to many different design initiatives. Most importantly for this investigation meta-design shows that it is possible to create contexts, which not only stimulate and direct more ‘useful, lasting and democratic’ design but also allow for more personally meaningful design, for professional, Pro-Am and amateur participants.
58 59
http://www.lab-au.com/ http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/
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How can the study of open organizations and meta-design contribute to developing a
new collaborative design initiative? Examining these graphic design projects shows that the meta-design methods can help developers of collaborative art and design projects to organize the creative process and give the participants the tools and knowledge to
contribute creatively. The following section of this thesis will attempt to demonstrate the significance of the collaborative design approach by applying the SER process model
to a concept proposal for a graphic design initiative: ‘do studio’. The eight rules of ‘open organization’ proposed by Charles Leadbeater will also form a significant part of the
conceptual framework for ‘do Studio’. Combining these two approaches will clarify how the professional graphic designer can stimulate and direct collaboration (SER process
model) and how they can create an open organization (eight rules to open organization) in which the participants manage the creative process.
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SECTION III / ENVISAGING AN OPEN, COLLABORATIVE DESIGN INITIATIVE
The main aim of this section is to apply the collaborative and ‘open approach’ to a new design initiative and propose a project concept to show how to organize the project
development and stimulate professional, Pro-Am and amateur collaboration. How can professional designers employ the meta-design approach and the ‘open organization’ methods to aid collaboration with Pro-Am and amateur participants? Why would
designers want to make the creative process of a project collaborative? In the following section the concept for a collaborative design project, ‘do Studio’, will be described in
more detail and the methods for organizing this collaborative process will be discussed. The idea of ‘do Studio’ will remain as a theoretical proposal for a design initiative and
therefore it is appropriate to conclude this part of the investigation with an analysis of
the possible opportunities and challenges such a design initiative could face and how the investigation could be followed up.
7. ENVISAGING A OPENLY ORGANIZED AND COLLABORATIVE GRAPHIC DESIGN INITIATIVE
This collaborative design project will concentrate on stimulating ‘more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication’, as proposed by the First Things First manifesto mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Section I’ of this thesis. Analyzing the possible
content and context of such a collaborative design project should clarify how professional, Pro-Am and amateur participants would be able to work together and organize
themselves. Sketching a plan and structure for this design initiative should also illustrate
how the ‘open organization’ approach and the process of ‘seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding’ can be applied in the collaborative design process.
In order to give a sufficient idea of the concept a number of aspects of ‘do Studio’ must be defined:
1. The concept of ‘do Studio’
2. What would ‘do Studio’ be doing?
3. Where would this studio be situated and who would be involved? 4. How would the studio be organized?
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7.1 The concept of ‘do Studio’ / an open studio for visual arts & communication
Project philosophy: ‘do Studio’ is a concept that builds on the brand: ‘do’, developed by
communications agency KesselsKramer, described in the previous section. The idea behind using this existing brand is that ‘do Studio’ fits well in the philosophy of the ‘do’ brand
and also in this way seeks to emphasize the ‘do’ motto: ‘do is the ever-changing brand that depends on what you do’. KesselsKramer have made it clear in their book ‘one hundred and one things to do’ that the brand ‘do’ ‘is mine and yours together’ and that they want
people to ‘use, create, interact, build, mold, shape, question, push, co-create, hit, swing, challenge or design’ with ‘do’.”60 That is precisely what ‘do Studio’ intends, to develop more ‘useful,
lasting and democratic’ forms of design by proposing a virtual and perhaps even a real-
life space where professional designers and design enthusiasts can meet, and share their creative ideas and participate in collaborative design initiatives.
Collaboration: An important aspect that ‘do Studio’ will have to ensure is free access
and open participation; it is important that the space encourages both professionals and
amateurs and all those in between to participate. In this way ‘do Studio’ would be an open design studio, initiated and directed by professional developers/designers, created and developed mostly by the participants.
Commons: Another important feature of the open studio is the ‘commons’ philosophy.
In the most ideal situation all the work made by the participants and developers would
be free to use and develop continuously, similar to work created through collaboration in open-source software projects. People can contribute to design projects but they can also make use of the work they come across for personally meaningful creative initiatives and
for educational purposes. There are new ways to approach authorship of creative content, to make it freer than the ‘all rights reserved’ copyright. An important advocate of such
license models is Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons (CC) and professor of law at Stanford in California, who has written at length about new approaches to copyright licensing.
The idea of Creative Commons is to “use private rights to create public goods: creative
works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain
uses of them — to declare ‘some rights reserved’.”61 This vision of Creative Commons closely 60 61
KesselsKramer / One hundred and one things to do / BIS publishers / 2006 www.creativecommons.org/
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resembles that of the ‘open organization’ of Pro-Am communities and should be a fundamental feature of ‘do Studio’.
Community: It is crucial to create a space for a design community to develop: a virtual or real public space in which people can meet each other, discuss topics, share ideas, be creative. A design community, much like Pro-Am communities, will probably develop through shared interest in various fields of design. As Charles Leadbeater writes, “We
engage with people who share our view of the world without having to live next door to them.”62 At the same time it is also important for participants to be able to develop their own
personal profiles, accounts and possibly even avatars to define themselves as individuals in
the community. This would enable people to build up a personal ‘portfolio’ and reputation,
which can be judged and recognized by the rest of the community. Working for (personal) recognition is a factor that drives Pro-Am activities, and therefore can also be an
important feature for a ‘do Studio’ design community. Without a community of dedicated, like-minded people forming friendships and lasting working relationships it will be
difficult to keep the design activities going. A design community is essential in creating such a collaborative design initiative as ‘do Studio’.
Collaboration, commons and community are the main focus of ‘do Studio’. After
introducing these main conceptual elements for the studio, it is important to give a more specific perspective how these elements could be put into practice. 7.2 What will ‘do Studio’ be doing?
The main focus of this open design studio will be to keep an up-to-date overview of
ongoing collaborative design projects, which can easily be accessed by participants. These can be initiatives for: type design, infographic design, photography, magazine design, book design, animation, game design, (short) film, postcard design, product design,
fashion design, web design, software design, architecture, city planning, or any other field of design conceivable. The possibilities are inspiring and should not be limited. Similar
to the development of Wikipedia, it should be up to the participants to choose a project they wish to participate in, or if they prefer to propose an initiative themselves. In open
source software development sourceforge.net serves as an excellent example of this type
of collective organization of many different collaborative projects. There is much to learn
from this community of software developers. Their slogan, “Create, Participate, Evaluate”63
sums up the most important aspects of their organization, which links back to the open 62 63
Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net http://sourceforge.net
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organization of Pro-Am’s, discussed in the previous section: 1. creative and innovative
ambition 2. collaborative approach to research and development of creative production 3. collaborative approach to discussing and evaluating their work. These aspects, also
inherent to the philosophy of Pro-Am activity are very important in the organization of ‘do studio’, which should reflect in the following concept descriptions.
Diagram I illustrates a conceptual structure of the open studio, mapping out the main features that will be focused on. The following text helps to describe these features:
diagram I. / organizational structure of ‘do Studio’
Collection of ongoing design projects: This aspect of ‘do studio’ will list the various ‘open source’ art, design & communication projects. Participants can add new design projects
to the list, and/or join in the development of existing projects. The aim is to give a clear overview of all the design projects to make it easier for potential participants to find a
project they would like to work on together with other participants. Obviously there are many ways to participate in a design project: by conceptualizing, designing, reviewing,
usability testing. Once a potential participant selects a particular project it should be made clear the different ways they can contribute to the design process. In this way people can get an idea how they would like to participate and apply their interest, knowledge and
skills. Professional designers may then take the chance to direct the design process and
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design enthusiasts may see an opportunity to develop their skills as designers. The key in this aspect of ‘do Studio’ is to communicate vacancies in projects and to stimulate people to contribute by giving detailed ‘job’ descriptions.
Resources/ Tools and Information: ‘do Studio’ also aims to build a constantly growing
‘library’ of common design resources. The studio seeks to provide a place where all types of useful information and design tools can be collected in a structured way. The idea of
a collaborative resource center is that people can use images and add images freely (to a reasonable degree), which together will form a large library of images and information, continuously growing by user participation and creation.
The resource center of ‘do Studio’ will aim at collecting information and tools that
could help participants and those interested in design related subjects to research and
develop design projects. One specific web-based application that could be useful to allow participants to collect information is the wiki, discussed in Section I of this thesis. A
‘design wiki’, which would be initialized by the developers of ‘do Studio’ and developed through collaboration with participants, could be a good way to develop a information center, concentrating on design and design related subjects. The field of design will be
the point of reference, and it will be up to the participants how far they want to develop the ‘information network’ relating to design. Developers of ‘do Studio’ may learn from
information networks like ‘Wikipedia’, which provide the initial structure and leave it up to the participants to create and edit the content.
Apart from creating a collaborative center for design information it is also important to
give participants the tools to develop design projects. For computer-based design projects this could be done by providing a list of open source design software programs and links where they can be downloaded. Websites like sourceforge.net have hundreds of free
creative software programs that can be downloaded and used, such as picture-editing,
movie-making, music-composing programs. Open-access to these digital design tools is essential to make the design process more ‘democratic’.
Other useful design resources such as design templates, stock images, music/sounds
samples, video images and can help designers create new work. ‘do Studio’ could also provide a place to collect visual art & design work ‘open’ to use by the community. Another interesting aspect of designing and learning to design with the tools and
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resources available is the use of tutorials. Creating a large organization of design related
tutorials might also be a very interesting collaborative initiative for ‘do Studio’ to develop. It could help design enthusiast to learn the practical skills needed to improve their work.
Design education is a collaborative process that could be made more accessible to a wider public; if there is a need for education then it should be met.
‘do Studio’ community: Creating a structure to help organize a design community is quite a complex endeavor. Computer-mediated communication has made it easier for people to
create and participate in online communities. Investigating communities, such as ‘slashdot. org’, ‘makezin.com’, ‘facebook.com’ has given some idea what features are important to consider in an attempt to create a successful self-governing community.
An essential factor in any community is communication. Throughout the Internet forums are providing people with the space and means to communicate on a large scale. Forums
can be described as virtual public spaces where participants can post thoughts and react to
other people’s thoughts. In an idealistic sense a forum is the example of the ancient Greek ‘agora’, or public sphere where everyone has equal access and opportunity to communicate their ideas. In order for people to become engaged and continue to participate ‘do Studio’ must make the community an integral part of the organization. An online forum, or
the possibility of creating numerous forums, could play a very crucial role in the social
cohesiveness of participants collaborating or seeking new collaborations with each other. It could also be interesting to give people the room to create personal spaces, which
help them to define their own interests, creativity and identity. Apart from providing the opportunity for people to share ideas and take part in discussions it is interesting
to consider the option of giving participants the ability to create personally meaningful representations, such as avatars in Second Life, or personal pages at myspace.com. An
interesting approach is to allow participants to link these personal pages to each other, thereby also creating community through more personal online participation.
Apart from creating community through online participation, it might also be possible to
stimulate physical communities of ‘do Studio’ participants, by creating public spaces where people can meet, work, collaborate and discuss. This brings up a new question: in which physical and virtual surroundings could ‘do studio’ base itself.
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7.3 Where would ‘do Studio’ be situated and who would be involved
‘do Studio’ is interested in utilizing and creating public space for participation in creative processes, concentrating on inclusive instead of exclusive space. To begin with, ‘do
Studio’ could be based in various virtual settings; allowing interaction through computer mediated communication (CMC), such as a website and a common space in a virtual
3D world like Second Life. Collaborating through CMC could make it easier for people to work together over long distances, and with new web applications it is becoming
increasingly possible to design together, as can be seen in the collaborative creation of online environments such as Second Life.
However, in most fields of design it is often necessary and more engaging to work faceto-face with other participants. Due to its multidisciplinary setup ‘do Studio’ should be situated in multiple social settings simultaneously, to meet the demands of multimedia
communication and production. The following descriptions will indicate some possible environments that ‘do Studio’ could utilize to form an ‘open’ studio, where creativity
between professionals, Pro-Am’s and amateurs can be stimulated, without barriers to entry.
‘do Studio’ website: a website could bring together the three aspects of ‘do Studio’:
collaboration, common design resources and community. One only has to look at websites such as Sourceforge, Wikipedia and Slashdot to see the possibilities to combine these
features all in one website. As was mentioned before, the ‘do Studio’ website could present a searchable network of collaborative design projects and provide a collection of opensource software and other resources needed for digital design practices. Websites such
as web logs, forums, chat rooms, and web applications such as, instant messaging, VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), IRC (Internet Relay Chat), could help ‘do Studio’ and
participants to structure their communication, which is an essential factor in upholding the online community.
According to Tim O’Reilly, Web 2.0 demonstrates the new ways of using the Internet for collaboration and sharing between users. “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the
rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that
harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called ‘harnessing collective intelligence.’)”64 Approaching the ‘do Studio’ website as a Web 2.0 64
Tim O’Reilly / Web 2.0 Compact definition / http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html
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design means that the developers have to look at the website as a platform, and therefore should create an environment and functionality to enable participants/users to create content and link this content to a larger network.
Virtual 3D ‘do studio’: By creating a virtual 3D studio/expo in Second Life ‘do Studio’ could establish a virtual public space where participants can socialize and collaborate
in creative processes. As mentioned before Second Life (SL) is a 3D virtual world that
allows participants to interact with each other through avatars: modifiable representation of themselves. The environment of Second Life also allows participants (know as
inhabitants in SL) to design 3D in-world spaces such as houses and theaters where people can meet, and create items and services that can be bought or sold. An ‘open’ environment
such as this could be inspiring for participants, being a place where new creative items and services can be made, presented, used, re-used, re-designed etc.
8
The question is whether it would be possible to organize collaboration in creative production in
this virtual world and if the outcome of this production can also transcend the virtual world and be useful for the ‘real’ world. This is not a question that will be addressed in this investigation
but it does introduce the possibility that creativity, in for instance Second Life, might be able to have a purpose beyond the virtual world. An example of how collaboration and participation
can transcend from virtual to real is in education. There are already numerous universities, such as Harvard and Princeton that stimulate educational activity in online virtual worlds. Some professors even give lectures to their students in virtual classrooms in Second Life.
Figure 8 / From left to right - top to bottom / Red {an Orchestra}: a virtual orchestra in Second Life / Cyberclass: a Harvard Law School lecture in Second Life / Rooftop installation: a virtual artwork by Adam Ramona / Lucky Figtree: a Second Life debate
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Open ‘do Studio’s: Starting small, it might be possible to link designers to a physical ‘do studio’ in a particular city, providing common space and tools to enable participants to
work and be creative together. Depending on how well the concept catches on it might be possible to link physical ‘do Studios’ nationally, linking initiatives from city to city
within the same country; building a network of open studios where participants can go
to meet each other in person and collaborate in design projects. In this way professional, Pro-Am and amateur designers can make use of a larger network of designers and
design initiatives. If a network of design studios where to grow nationally it might also be possible to set up similar initiatives internationally, creating a vast network of ‘open’
studios in different countries where people from around the world can go to meet each other. It is a very idealistic prospect to think that such an organization may grow and
develop in this way, but then again in this conceptual stage it does indicate that such a project could become widespread and why it could be beneficial.
Universities / Art & Design academies: As KesselsKramer also demonstrate in their book ‘One hundred and one things to do’, design schools and universities are excellent social
settings to stimulate and direct collaboration. Their collaborative seminar/workshop at the art and design school in Boxtel, described in the previous section, was able to stimulate
collaboration between students, teachers and professional designers. This is an approach
that ‘do Studio’ could also apply, working together with educational institutions to set up
workshops, seminars and collaborative design projects with and amongst students. Apart
from being great places to stimulate collaborative projects, universities and academies are institutions that offer many resources that are essential for design practices; information,
tools and educational courses that could help participants learn more about design theory, the design process and the application of design.
Who would be involved in the open studio? Another characteristic of ‘do Studio’ is that
it strives to be multidisciplinary, showing that design projects involve people with various different professional and non-professional backgrounds.
Developers: The initial developers of ‘do Studio’ will be responsible for creating the
structure and philosophy for the ‘open organization’ of the studio in different contexts, virtual and real. The goal is to create an environment where people themselves can
be creative and can take control of creative processes, whether they are individual or collaborative.
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Skilled designers (professional and Pro-Am designers): Designers that have experience and
are knowledgeable in specific fields of design are crucial in initiating and directing design initiatives. For example, a skilled graphic designer would be able to propose and direct a
collaborative design initiative, such as making a newspaper. Having experience in making a newspaper, and knowing the various elements that are needed to make a newspaper
work allow a knowledgeable graphic designer to take the initiative in coordinating the collaborative creation of the content.
Teachers and academics: Similarly to the professional designers, teachers and academics are
familiar with collaborative methods, such as peer-review and project management and can be useful in directing and evaluating design work and the process of designing. They may also play an important role in research and conceptual development, depending on their interest and specialization.
Amateur designers: Designers who are able to design and have some skills in and
knowledge of design and design related subjects. They see design as a hobby and are still in the process of building up their skills and knowledge of design practices and applications of design.
Design enthusiasts: The viewing audience that doesn’t participate or contribute to the
design process, the common design resources or the community, but does show interest in design by reading about it and observing design activities through ‘do Studio’ initiatives.
In this way they are involved without actively participating in any initiatives of ‘do Studio’. After giving a brief conceptual overview of ‘do Studio’, the spaces where the studio could be situated and the people that could be involved, it is useful to give an idea how the
studio may best be organized to initiate and sustain collaboration, common resources and community.
7.4 How would the studio be organized?
As a concept, ‘do Studio’ is a multidisciplinary design initiative that attempts to combine the main methods of ‘open organization’, proposed by Charles Leadbeater, and the SER process model of Fischer and Ostwald65 to direct the collaborative design process. The
eight rules for ‘open organization’ present the means to define a structure in which a
design community can organize themselves and create (personally) meaningful design Fischer, G., & Ostwald, J. / Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding: Enriching Participatory Design with Informed Participation / 2002 / pp. 135-143. 65
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work. Once the main structure is in place a more specific methodology is needed to help structure the actual design process. The SER process model serves as a good method for
the more knowledgeable designers to begin organizing the design process. ‘do Studio’ aims at bringing together professional designers/developers and Pro-Am participants; creating a project environment where participants can be in control of their own aesthetic and cultural production and collaborate in multidisciplinary design processes.
Open organization: The eight rules of ‘open organization’ could help ‘do Studio’ in formalizing the initial structure of the organization.
1. A kernel to get things going... the goal of ‘do Studio’, the work ethics that guide the
participants, the organizational structure of the studio and a couple of design project propositions are the initial ‘kernels’ to get people started in the open studio. The
developers have to initiate some impressive collaborative projects to get things going, and then it is up to other participants if they choose to collaborate; to develop the ‘kernel’
into a full-fledged design project. Once the initial design projects start ‘rolling’ then more design initiatives could be proposed by other ‘skilled’ designers who wish to develop their own design project.
2. Motivate and attract contributors... In order to get people to participate in ‘do Studio’ it is necessary to motivate and attract contributors. First of all, people have to be well informed
of the projects they can participate in and must be convinced that their skills could make a difference, and that it could be fun and meaningful to collaborate.
3. Crowds need meeting places… Access to common tools, information and the ability to
communicate to peers are essential aspect of collaboration determined by the ‘openness’ of the virtual and real spaces that house participants of ‘do Studio’ design projects.
4. Self-distribution of labor… Participants will choose for the projects they feel are most
interesting, fun and meaningful. Recognition, self-expression and the will to learn should be the ‘currencies’ that drive participants to contribute.
5. Encourage people to build on your ideas... When someone proposes a collaborative project it is up to them to convince other people to become participants in the creative process
and to build on their ideas. It is just as important to encourage people to design, as it is
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We design and do it because we love it | section III
to ask for people to give feedback and reviews of designed work, in order to be able to evaluate and improve the design in process.
6. Think Lego... Approaching the design process as a group effort and splitting the process into blocks or modules requires the developers of the project to bring these together as
the project develops. The developers should direct the different modules and bring them together to evaluate and re-design them until they are ready to be re-evaluated and
finalized. This aspect of open organization resembles the methods proposed by the SER process model, which has been discussed previously.
7. Conversational leaders... Instead of having well-paid managers and directors appointed to tell people what to do, leaders in ‘do Studio’ should be those participants who take
initiative by proposing design projects, building up organizational structures and proving
to others that they can guide projects to a desired end. It is about building up recognition and a portfolio of successful projects.
8. The New Model… Bringing the features of open organization together have made this
approach a success for a number of creative initiatives, which has been argued throughout this thesis. Applying the features to the concept of ‘do Studio’ is an attempt to propose a way to put this new model into practice.
These rules to open organization give an idea how to structure ‘do Studio’ in order to
create a self-governing, ‘free to access and use’ environment that aims to foster creativity. Now it is necessary to take a closer look how to organize the design process more
specifically and see how collaboration can be directed between professional designers, Pro-Am designers and amateur designers.
Meta-design approach: The descriptions of ‘do Studio’ up to this point has given an impression of the general structure of the studio concept and its ‘open’ approach to
organization. Diagram II shows a hypothetical overview of the evolutionary development of the three main aspects of ‘do Studio’ (community / design resources / design projects). The SER Process model serves as the basis for this overview and for the envisioned
development of ‘do Studio’. The main assumption of this perspective is that ‘do Studio’,
if successful, will continue to grow and develop once the first ‘seed’ has been ‘sown’ by the developers of the open studio. A ‘seed’ could be a photography assignment, a magazine
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We design and do it because we love it | section III
proposal, or an unfinished computer-game design. As time goes on the ‘concentration’
of projects, information and communication could increase, depending on the number
of participants, the amount of new proposals and the intensity of their contribution. In this perspective it becomes clear that ‘do Studio’ could be a user-created environment; a continuously developing collective of many different design projects, community engagements, and contributed resources.
It is also interesting to ‘zoom in’ and envision a specific design project that exemplifies this meta-design approach. A good example of a collaborative graphic design project
that seems to use the meta-design approach and the SER process model is the project
typeforge.net. Initiated by Pedro Amado, Typeforge “focuses on the development of complete fonts using Fontforge, and Type Design Documents on how to design fonts from scratch to an
advanced level. It aims that everyone involved can and will learn more about typography and
type developing in a collaborative method. It will provide the fonts and the font files regularly to users, developers and anyone with an interest in type.”66 de ve l
de ve l
op
s
op
&
pa re rtic -s ipa ee n di ts ng
er
s
diagram II. / hypothetical overview of the evolutionary development of ‘do studio’ / inspired by SER process model (Fischer & Ostwald, 2000)
&
pa re rtic -s ipa ee n di ts ng
design resources
op e pa rs & nt s pa se rt ed iciin g
de ve l
er
design projects
in continuum
in continuum
community
typeforge.org (check diagram III.)
in continuum
seeded information space
re-seeded information space
re-seeded information space
1.
2.
3.
key seeded information space : design projects / forums / image resources / tutorials / etc.
Studio time
66
Pedro Amado / Typeforge project description / http://www.typeforge.net/
49
We design and do it because we love it | section III
diagram III. / model of the design process of typeforge.net / designing a font family
de ve l
design projects
op e pa rs & nt s pa se rt ed iciin g
D
1.
2.
A working type specimin
A fully working typeface
de ve l
op
P
3.
D
4.
A full working font
seeded information space
completing the font
P
5.
er
s
&
pa re rtic -s ipa ee n di ts ng
bringing the font ‘family’ together
1.
in continuum
evolved information space D
P
key D developer : Pedro Amado P participants : type designers, font testers, critics, document writers
D
P
Studio time
Typeforge aims at developing a professional font in five phases during which the initial
design, or ‘seed’, evolves in the cyclical process of evaluation, ‘re-seeding’, re-designing and re-evaluation. This design process follows the meta-design methodology that envisions creative collaboration between developers (skilled designers) and participants (skilled
designers and amateur designers) and evolves over time. Diagram III gives a visualization
of the meta-design process that could apply more specifically to a design project within ‘do Studio’. Typeforge is a perfect example of a collaborative graphic design project that makes use of computer-mediated communication and open-source software to collaborate, use/
create common design resources and stimulate a small-scale community of type designers. Imagine if this project would be one of the thousand comparable projects collected in a large-scale design organization, such as ‘do Studio’. What are the opportunities and
challenges of initiating a design project in which participants collaborate and develop the design together? Could a large-scale, self-governing design studio be realized? Would
people be willing to participate and for what reason would they participate? What could be the outcome of such a design initiative?
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We design and do it because we love it | section III
8. DISCUSSING THE CONCEPT OF ‘DO STUDIO’ Why would people be willing to participate in ‘do Studio’? Looking at the group of people that could be involved in ‘do Studio’, described above (e.g. skilled designers,
teachers, amateurs etc.), there are several reasons why they would want to participate in a collaborative design environment:
1. Education: ‘do Studio’ could be an environment where people learn from each other through design practice and collaboration. Skilled designers could learn to direct the design process and in turn teach amateur designers new design skills.
2. Multidisciplinary collaboration: Multidisciplinary design projects would require people
from different backgrounds to work together and apply their expertise to certain aspects of a design initiative. The possibility to work and learn from multidisciplinary design
projects could attract people from many different fields of interest to become participants. 3. Open to participation: The ‘open’ philosophy of ‘do Studio’ may appeal to people who are looking to contribute at their own pace: no one to tell them what to do or when to do it.
Many people who were previously excluded from participating in design processes could
potentially take part, to learn the ‘tricks of the trade’, apply their own skills and share their ideas with other participants.
4. Create personally meaningful design and communication: Giving participants tools and
information to help them in the design process will be crucial to allow them to be creative themselves. As Gerard Fischer pointed out in his article ‘Beyond Couch Potatoes’ more
and more people want to become designers instead of always being at the receiving end
of the design process. An important aspect of ‘do Studio is also that people can build up
their own ‘identity’ with in the projects and design community and that their recognition grows as a result of their contribution.
5. Building a community and network: Designers will need other designers to help them
and it could be very convenient to build up a network, or community of people who have similar interests and goals.
6. Building commons: The prospect of contributing to and making use of free culture is
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We design and do it because we love it | section III
one that appeals to many people. Sharing a constantly growing library of resources, with
for example images, texts, templates could be an inviting aspect of an ‘open’ design studio, where people can use and develop resources freely. Participants would more likely make use the library if it is easily searchable and well organized. The organizational system is an aspect of ‘do Studio’ that would probably also develop over time, but an initial
structure (possibly a substantial start to the library) should be in place when people start
to contribute. Participants would also be more inclined to contribute to it if they believed that it was a reliable place for them to share their creative resources.
7. Innovation and development: The working methods and philosophy of the project as a whole concentrate on constantly evolving the design through ongoing collaborative
processes. In this sense all design project are creative development processes that rely on
constant evaluation to foster innovation. This method of working, constantly building on
ideas and creativity of others may also intrigue people who don’t consider themselves to be designers to participate in such design processes.
What could be the outcome of such a studio? From the beginning of this investigation
the aim has been to investigate and develop ways to create ‘useful, lasting and democratic communication through design’. The study of the Pro-Am movement and their working
methods have exemplified how people who aren’t considered to be professionals approach the design process in a more useful, lasting and democratic way. Pro-Am methods are
being praised by more and more designers and design theorists for their ways of working. How could professional designers stimulate and direct collaboration with Pro-Am’s
and amateurs and how could they adopt such an ‘open’ approach to design and to be able to create community in the design process. Meta-design, and the SER process
model in particular, illustrate a method to bring the professional, the Pro-Am and the amateur designers together in a collaborative design process. By making the design
process collaborative and open for more people to participate, not only for designers, this investigation supports the search for ‘useful, lasting and democratic communication’.
The main goal of the concept proposal for ‘do Studio’ has been to illustrate how such
an outcome could be reached through collaboration between professionals, Pro-Am’s and amateurs. The concept of this open studio is hypothetical, based on analysis and
comparison of existing initiatives from various fields of design, and design related fields.
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We design and do it because we love it | section III
Looking at comparable initiatives such as Wikipedia, Second Life and Make Magazine gives a glimpse of the possibilities these new ‘environments’ hold for the collective intelligence and collaborative creativity.
Could this project proposal yield a new collaborative process model for design projects?
The investigation of the eight rules of ‘open’ organization and the SER process model have made it possible to take a different approach to the collaborative design process. These
two approaches can be combined to enable developers (professional/skilled designers) to collaborate with users (Pro-Am/amateur designers) and to organize and structure their
design initiatives themselves in a larger context (‘do Studio’). In this way this investigation does combine these two approaches/models into one, to suggest a way to develop a large multidisciplinary design community, in which designers from various backgrounds can work together, share their work, and evolve.
The diagrams (I, II and III) attempt to visualize the structure and organization of ‘do
Studio’ and demonstrate how the approaches/models can be put into practice. Looking at diagram III shows the way the SER process model would work in a specific typography design project. The application of the model demonstrates the collaboration between
participants and developers of this specific project and how their collaboration helps in
the five-phase development of a ‘font family’ (a group of fonts relating to each other). At the end of phase five the project can continue, by proposing a new plan for a new font family or by proposing to re-design the existing font family. This diagram shows the application of the SER process model to a specific design initiative.
In diagram II the main point is that the SER process model can be applied to organize the evolutionary development of ‘do Studio’ as a whole. As in the ‘open organization’
approach the ‘seeds’ or ‘kernels’, proposed by the developers initiate different projects that constitute ‘do Studio’. As time goes on the amount of projects would grow as a result of more contribution and more design initiatives being proposed by the participants
of ‘do Studio’. The main difference of the SER process model in diagram II is that the
participants are able to propose design projects themselves, contribute to different projects and communicate freely with the rest of the ‘do Studio’ design community. Applying the
rules of ‘open organization’ to the SER process model would allow ‘do Studio’ to develop,
without the developers having total control over the proposal of new projects, the ‘seeding’ and ‘reseeding’ of these projects and the communication between participants.
53
We design and do it because we love it | section III
Could ‘do Studio’ become an ongoing collaborative design project? The start up of ‘do
Studio’ depends on the developers; to make sure that the ‘infrastructure’ of the project stimulates and allows for the various types of interaction. It is also important that the
developers of ‘do Studio’ propose some initial collaborative projects to get things started. The more interesting these initial projects are the better they will persuade people to participate and join the design process. The possibility that ‘do Studio’ could develop
from a concept into a real, large-scale collaborative project is a ‘long shot’. Its success
would mostly depend on people who feel inspired to contribute to the design processes
and continue developing them; by reviewing designs, discussing the work with others or
actually making the illustrations or layout of the design work. In order for this to happen ‘do Studio’ must allow people to take initiative, to be creative and direct the process
themselves. In theory, once the organizational ‘infrastructure’ is in place and the initial
projects are ready to be ‘seeded’, ‘do Studio’ will start growing and evolving as more people participate and contribute to the creative environment. Success depends on how engaged the participants will be in the design projects and the community of ‘do Studio’.
How could ‘do Studio’ be investigated further? The hypothetical proposal of ‘do Studio’ could be investigated more in-depth and tested on the assumptions made in this part
of the thesis. The aim of this section was to come up with a proposal for a concept that could be tested as a socio-cultural research ‘experiment’. Examples from the field such as Typeforge and other collaborative open-source projects prove that these kinds of
design projects do exist; the question is rather how well these projects work, whether they do bring about good design results and a stimulating creative environment. It
would be interesting to see whether the methods used to organize ‘do Studio’ and the
(design) processes could be put into practice and what the outcome would actually be
if the methods were applied to different kinds of design projects. Would a collaborative
typography design project work in the same way as a collaborative animation project? Can the SER process model be ‘re-designed’ to include individual creative processes within a social creative process?
Furthermore, there is another aspect of this investigation that has to be considered as well, namely whether the outcome of collaborative design processes, between professionals, Pro-Am’s and amateurs, is actually more ‘useful, lasting and democratic’. There are a
number of design critics and theorists who believe that by making the design process
more open for Pro-Am and amateur participation would degrade the quality and integrity
54
We design and do it because we love it | conclusion
of the design process and the design itself. For further investigation of the topics in thesis it is important to also consider the criticisms of design and media theorists, to give an
objective account of the subject of professional and Pro-Am collaboration and to be able to incorporate their criticism in testing the methodologies of meta-design and Pro-Am rules of ‘open organization’. It is also important to investigate the practical challenges
of professional and Pro-Am collaboration in design processes. Despite their differences, could they actually work together?
Conclusion / WE DESIGn “Based on the great benefits derived from the division of labor [Campbell, 1969; Florida, 2002]
professional designers play an important role in our society. The “average” person does not want to build her/his own house, design her/his own car, or write her/his own software system or sorting routine, and therefore is glad to delegate such tasks to domain designers. Likewise, most people
do not have the time to participate equally in all aspects of the political system in order to become fully engaged and informed, and therefore rely on intermediaries who act in their interests.” 67 This quote brings up an important point for this investigation: professional and skilled
designers will continue to play a vital role in (cultural) production because most people do not want to take part in designing most of the goods and services we make use of in our
daily lives. A Pro-Am does not seek to compete with a professional in a commercial sense, nor do Pro-Am’s strive to become totally self-sufficient. Pro-Am’s show professionals and amateurs that it is possible to take a more personal approach to design, if you have the ‘tools, skills and knowledge’ to do so.
Is the Pro-Am movement just a passing trend? The concept of the Pro-Am is relatively
new even though the influences of the Pro-Am movement can be traced back decades to the counterculture of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The historical investigation in the beginning
of this thesis indicates that the ethics and motivation for the current development of the
Pro-Am ‘revolution’ are deeply rooted into our Western culture. They have reinvented and
continued the Do-it-Yourself mentality; carrying on the belief that by taking initiative and working openly together it is possible to become less dependent on commercial products and services. Criticism of the commercial agenda is exactly what professional designers
are also expressing more and more nowadays; the First Things First Manifesto 2000 is a
clear example that this struggle for more engagement in design, and through design, is an 67
Gerard Fischer / Beyond “Couch Potatoes”: From Consumers to designers and active contributors / 2002
55
We design and do it because we love it | conclusion
important topic for designers. This has been the main motivation for this study and has set the basis for the main standpoint of this investigation.
Stimulating and directing professional and Pro-Am and amateur collaboration in design processes will foster “more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication”. This has been the plight of this investigation and throughout this thesis examples are given to illustrate that the collaborative design approaches and Pro-Am methods of ‘open
organization’ can help designers of all backgrounds engage in design. To include the
viewers/users and make them participants in the design process can make the end result
more personally meaningful, and useful for a community if the design initiative addresses
issues shared by a larger group of people. Creating community through such collaborative design processes can also contribute to more lasting forms of communication in the form of expanding social and information networks. The case studies of ‘de Dienst’ and ‘do’
clearly demonstrate the thesis standpoint. The collaborative methodologies that these two design initiatives employ empowered the ‘audience’ to become active participants in the design process. ‘do’ and ‘de Dienst’ are quite specific examples of this open and
collaborative approach to design and are initiatives/projects carried out in the Netherlands by Dutch design and communication bureaus. It would be interesting, for further
investigation in this subject, to explore similar initiatives in other countries and perhaps in other fields of design, to show that this development in design is becoming more widespread.
There are of course also various critical perspectives concerning the democratization of the design process. One of the main features of Pro-Am involvement in design processes is
that of free/open participation and contribution. Participants are free to come and go as
they please; there are no formal consequences if a participant decides to leave the design
process. This could make the design process quite unstable, if there isn’t a team basis, as is
often the case in professional design projects. Another criticism of open participation may be that with no barriers of entry more people will be able to sabotage the design process. Both of these points can be considered drawbacks to the idea of open participation.
However an argument that has been put forward to counter these criticisms is the power and influence community ethics and codes of conduct demonstrate to defend against the
rebellious attempts of individual saboteurs. The website Slashdot serves as a good example of a community that governs itself; giving trusted members the ability to moderate and
condemn unwanted behavior and participation on the website. It is important to mention
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We design and do it because we love it | conclusion | acknowledgements
that these points of criticism have to be studied further and are very relevant to the further investigation of openly organized collaboration in design processes.
The concept of ‘do Studio’ illustrates that ‘openly organized’ collaboration between
professionals, Pro-Am’s and amateurs in design projects is theoretically possible and that the methods used can help to make design more open for people to contribute. The concept of ‘do Studio’ can serve as the starting point for further investigation of
collaborative design, as a proposal for a socio-cultural research project. It would be very interesting to see what kind of collaboration could be stimulated by design initiatives
and what the outcome of ‘do Studio’ design projects might be. Would ‘do Studio’ attract
enough participants? How could the developers stimulate enough people to participate, without offering them wages? How does the individual creative process relate to the collaborative creative process? Apart from continuing the project from an academic
perspective it could also be interesting to set up ‘do Studio’ as a real design initiative. The next step in order to realize ‘do Studio’ is to conceive an organization and a step-by-step plan how to set up the first design projects and collaboration with a design team. Who knows what the future may bring for design initiatives like ‘do Studio’.
To quote Bill Drayton, in Bruce Mao’s book ‘Massive Change’: “We are at a stage in the evolution of our planet that we have to think and work together.”68 More and more, I think we have to design together.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for helping me through this one and a half
year ‘journey’ and inspiring me in my studies & life: Ingrid Mulder, Lisa Janssen, Sophie Hamers, Paul van den Hoven, Aukje Thomassen, Hanke Leeuw, Merel Gilsing, Ina van
der Brug, Christina Slade, Bart Dieho, Nirav Christophe, Ineke Muller, my colleagues at
Commodore Gaming, my colleagues from project group ‘Straatbeeld’, my classmates from PSAU, Martijn Engelbregt, John Brooke, Joep van Esch, Jos Hoes, Sean Charles, Ruben van Leer, Jasminka Beganovic, Mieke Hoogerbrugge, and my family: Adriaan, Wanda, Wendelien and Richard Hebly. 68
Bruce Mao & Jennifer Leonard / Massive Change / 2004
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We design and do it because we love it | references
FEATURED REFERENCES Articles > Giovanni Aneceshi / Visibility in Progress / Design Issues: Volume 12 / Number 3 / MIT Press / 1996
Audrey Bennet / Interactive Aesthetics / Design Issues: Volume 18 / Number 3 / MIT Press / 2002
Max Bruinsma / In discussie met de openbare mening / OPEN 11 / 2006 Nick Couldry / The productive consumer and the dispersed citizen / In: The International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1): 21-32 / 2004
Gerard Fischer / Beyond “Couch Potatoes”: From Consumers to designers and active contributors / First Monday / Issue 7 / December 2002 / http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/
Gerhard Fischer / Meta—Design: Beyond User-Centered and Participatory Design /
University of Colorado / Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) / Department of Computer Science / 2003
Fischer, G., & Scharff, E / Meta-Design—Design for Designers / 3rd International
Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2000) / New York / 2000 / pp. 396-405. Fischer, G., & Ostwald, J. / Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding: Enriching Participatory Design with Informed Participation / Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC’02) / Malmö University / Sweden / 2002 / pp. 135-143.
Ken Garland / First Things First Manifesto 1964 / http://www.kengarland.co.uk/ Elisa Giaccardi & Gerhard Fischer / Creativity and Evolution, A Metadesign Perspective / Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) / Department of Computer Science / University of Colorado / 2005 / http://x2.i-dat.org/~eg/research/publications.htm
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We design and do it because we love it | references
Elisa Giaccardi / Metadesign as an Emergent Design Culture / Leonardo Vol. 38 / No. 4 / 2005 / http://x2.i-dat.org/~eg/research/publications.htm
Robert van Gijssel / Interview with Martijn Engelbregt: Het gaat me om de zoektocht / Volkskrant / 04.06.2004
Joke Hermes / Gevangen in Ongemak / OPEN 10 / 2006 Ivan Illich / Tools for Conviviality / New York / Harper and Row / 1973 / http://clevercycles.com/tools_for_conviviality/
Nicholas W. Jankowski / Creating community with media: history, theories and scientific investigation / in: S. Livingstone & L. Lievrouw (eds.), Handbook of New Media.
London: Sage / 2002 / http://oase.uci.ru.nl/~jankow/Jankowski/publications/main.htm Naomi Klein / The Financial Times / May 29 / 2001 Norman, D. A., & Draper, S. W. / User-Centered System Design, New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction / Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. / Hillsdale, NJ / 1986
Tim O’Reilly / Web 2.0 Compact definition / http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/ web_20_compact.html
Virginia Postrel / Do it yourself / in: Business Week / April 2007 / http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/ Theodore Roszak / From Satori to SiliconValley / 2000 /
http://library.stanford.edu/mac/primary/docs/satori/reversionaries.html Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. / Participatory Design: Principles and Practices / Lawrence Erlbaum Associates / Hillsdale, NJ. / 1993
Marc Vlemmings / De beste stuurlui stappen aan boord / In: Items 2 / BIS Publishers / April 2007
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We design and do it because we love it | references
Lee Worden / The Rise and Fall of the Whole Earth Catalog / 2004 / http://two.ucdavis.edu/~worden/ Books > Michael Bierut, William Drenttel & Steven Heller / Looking Closer Four: critical writings on graphic design / Allworth Press / New York / 2002
Manuel Castells / The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business and Society / Oxford University Press / 2001
Martijn Engelbregt / Dit Is Nederland / Valiz / 2006 KesselsKramer / One hundred and one things to do / BIS publishers / 2006 Charles Leadbeater / We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing / www.wethinkthebook.net
Bruce Mao & Jennifer Leonard / Massive Change / Phaidon Press Limited / 2004 Howard Rheingold / The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier / The MIT Press; Rev Sub edition / November 1, 2000 / http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/
Webster’s New World Dictionary / Third College Edition / Simon & Schuster / 1988
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We design and do it because we love it | references
GENERAL REFERENCES & FURTHER READING Articles > Susanne Bodker, Christina Nielsen & Marianne Graves Petersen / Creativity,
Cooperation and Interactive Design / University of Aarhus / Denmark / 2000 www.daimi.au.dk/~sorsha/Papers/CreaDIS_printed.pdf
Alex Coles / On Art’s Romance with Design / Design Issues / Volume 21 / No. 3 / MIT Press / 2005
Geoff Cox & Joasia Krysa / Art as Engineering: techno-art collectives and social
change / In: Art Inquiry / vol. V: Cyberarts / Cybercultures / Cybersocieties, Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, ed., Lodz: Scientific Society Press, Poland / 2003 / http://wiki.i-dat.org/wiki/research/read/Home
Geoff Cox & Joasia Krysa / System error: economies of cultural production in the
network society / In: Malcolm Miles, ed. New Practices / New Pedagogies, London: Routledge / 2005 / http://wiki.i-dat.org/wiki/research/read/Home
Lincoln Dahlberg / Computer-Mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis / JCMC (1) / October / 2001 /
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue1/dahlberg.html Jodi Forlizzi and Cherie Lebbon / From Formalism to Social Significance in
Communication Design / Design Issues: Volume 18 / Number 4 / MIT Press / 2002 Jean-Paul Fourmentraux / Internet Artworks, Artists and Computer Programmers: Sharing the Creative Process / Leonardo Vol.39 / No.1 / 2006
Steven Heller / Back Talk, Interview with Max Bruinsma / Print / Krause Publications Inc / 2000 Henry Jenkins / Interactive audiences? The ‘collective intelligence’ of media fans /
In: Dan Harries (ed.), The New Media Book, London: British Film Institute / 2002 / http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/publications.html
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We design and do it because we love it | references
Rachael Luck / Dialogue in participatory design / Design Studies 24 / Elsevier ltd. / 2003 Tim O’Reilly / What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation Software / 2005 /
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html Nathaniel Poor / Mechanisms of an online public sphere: The website Slashdot / In: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(2), article 4 / 2005 / http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/poor.html
T.L. Taylor / The social design of virtual worlds: constructing the user and community through code / In M. Consalvo et. al. (eds) / Internet Research Annual / Volume 1:
Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences 2000-2002. / New York / Peter Lang / 2004.
Theo Tegelaers / Interview with Martijn Engelbreg: De kunstopdracht de Dienst / Van Logement naar Parlement / 2004
Tiziana Terranova / Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy / In: Social text; vol. 18 / 2000
Andrew Vandenburg / Citizenship and Democracy in a global era / Macmillan London / 2000 Benjamin Weil / Art in Digital Times: From Technology to Instrument / Leonardo / Volume 35, No. 5 / 2002 / pp. 523-537
Barry Wellman & Milena Gulia / Net Surfers don’t ride alone: Virtual communities as
communities / in: Networks in the Global Village, ed. Barry Wellman, Boulder-Colorado / 1999
Books > Yochai Benkler / The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedoms / Yale University Press / New Haven and London / 2006 http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page
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We design and do it because we love it | references
Jürgen Habermas / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere / MIT Press / 1991
Lawrence Lessig / Free Culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity / the Penguin Press / New York / 2004 / http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/
Wark McKenzie / A Hacker Manifesto / Cambridge, Mass / Harvard University Press / 2004
Chris Turner / Do-It-Yourself: About Bart Simpson and the ‘do-it-yourself ’ philosophy of punk / In: Planet Simpson / Ebury Press / London / 2005
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We design and do it because we love it | references
(FEATURED) WEB LINKS Adbusters
Great website that seeks to transform commercial media culture and direct it towards ecological and social awareness. http://www.adbusters.org/
Center for Lifelong Learning
The Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) is part of the Department of
Computer Science and the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/ Creative Commons
Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all
rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you
keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.
http://creativecommons.org/ EGBG / de Dienst
http://de-dienst.nl/ Institure Without Boundaries
A program of the School of Design at George Brown College http://www.institutewithoutboundaries.com/ KesselsKramer / ‘do’
http://www.dosurf.com/
http://www.kesselskramer.com/ Lab[au]
Laboratory for architecture and urbanism in Brussels http://www.lab-au.com/
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Linden Research
To connect us all to an online world that advances the human condition. http://lindenlab.com Make magazine
The first magazine devoted entirely to DIY technology projects, MAKE Magazine unites, inspires and informs a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements, and garages. http://www.makezine.com/ The Pro-Am Revolution
A blog on the way to a book about people who take amateur pursuits to professional standards. Authors include Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller. http://www.proamrevolution.com/ Second Life
Join a burgeoning new online society, shaped entirely by its residents. Here you can be
or do anything. Explore an ever-changing 3D landscape. Meet new and exciting people. Create a masterpiece - or an empire. Second Life is yours - to imagine, invent, and inhabit.
http://secondlife.com/ SKOR
Institute for Art and Public Spaces (Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte) in the Netherlands
http://www.skor.nl/ Slashdot
News for nerds. Stuff that matters. http://slashdot.org Sourceforge
The world’s largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications.
http://sourceforge.net/
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Typeforge
This project focuses on the development of complete fonts using Fontforge, and Type Design Documents on how to design fonts from scratch to an advanced level. http://www.typeforge.net The Well
The WELL, originally the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, provides a literate watering hole for some articulate and unpretentious thinkers. http://www.well.com
The Whole Earth Catalog Online
Curiosity. Exploration. Independence. Community. Living fearlessly. Principles. Tools and ideas. Whole Earth shows you ways to take back your power and put it to use. http://wholeearth.com
(FEATURED) AUTHOR LINKS >
Links to researchers / professors / authors / artists / designers in the field: Yochai Benkler
http://www.benkler.org Stewart Brand
http://sb.longnow.org/ Max Bruinsma
http://www.maxbruinsma.nl/ Martijn Engelbregt
http://www.egbg.nl/ Elisa Giaccardi
http://x2.i-dat.org/~eg/ Nikolas Jankowski
http://oase.uci.ru.nl/~jankow/Jankowski/publications/main.htm
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Henry Jenkins
http://www.henryjenkins.org/ Naomi Klein
http://www.naomiklein.org/ Charles Leadbeater
www.charlesleadbeater.net Lawrence Lessig
http://www.free-culture.cc Tim O’Reilly
http://www.oreilly.com Howard Reingold
http://www.rheingold.com/ T. L. Taylor
http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/cv.html